If there is one thing I’m learning it’s that I will always thank myself on Tuesday night for cooking up a batch of brown rice Sunday. Food prep like cooking grains, baked potatoes and even shredded chicken in the slow cooker ALWAYS saves me during the school week.

When I find myself unsure of what I want to make for dinner (not to mention, short on time), it’s always incredibly helpful to have a few staples already cooked up and waiting in the fridge. Brown rice is one of those staples and helps to make this super quick and easy Vegetable Fried Brown Rice possible even on the busiest of nights.

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For the last couple of months, I’ve been doing a great job of not only planning out dinners each week, but also going through my beloved cookbook collection to try out new recipes. I have quite a few favorite go-to cookbooks, two of them from my friend Mary of Barefeet In The Kitchen blog. Her style of cooking is my style of cooking – simple and perfect for our busy family.

I shared with you Mary’s Cheesy Southwest Beef & Potato Skillet from her first cookbook a couple of years ago and let me tell you, this dish is requested OFTEN in my house. My kids love it and have nicknamed it “cheeseburger on a plate”, I’m thinking the beef, cheese and potatoes have something to do with that. I’ll take it.

Mary’s most recent cookbook The Weekday Lunches & Breakfasts Cookbook is just as awesome as her first one. She writes her recipes so well, with clear and easy instructions that her young sons can follow and cook from. I love how she involves her family in the kitchen (if you follow her on Instagram you can catch glimpses of her sweet family).

This Asian Chicken and Broccoli Stir Fry is the first I tried from her new cookbook and it’s one I know I’ll be making again. Seriously, so simple and comes together in under 30 minutes – my family loved it. I cooked it for dinner but it would be absolutely perfect if you are looking for something to meal prep for lunches throughout your week.

How do you make healthy chicken and broccoli stir fry?

1. Heat large stainless steel skillet over medium-high heat. Add 1/2 tablespoon of oil, and let it warm for a few seconds. Add the onion strips and let them cook for 2 minutes. Add the garlic and stir. Push the garlic and onion to the outside of the pan.
2. Pour the remaining oil in the center of the skillet. Add the chicken. Spread across the skillet and sprinkle with cornstarch. Cook without stirring for 2 minutes, until browned, and then use a sturdy metal spatula to lift and flip each piece of chicken. Cook for 1 minute.
3. While the chicken is cooking, stir together the soy sauce, honey and chili paste. Add the sauce to the skillet and stir to combine.
4. Add the broccoli on top of the other ingredients and cover with lid. Cook for 2 minutes. The broccoli should be bright green and barely softened. Remove the lid and stir, scraping up any bits of sauce or meat from the bottom of the skillet. Simmer 1 minute to thicken the sauce, stirring frequently. Serve on its own or over rice, if desired.

All you need for this healthy chicken and broccoli stir fry is a skillet and a few ingredients – you can’t beat that!

I also cooked up her Slow Cooker Green Chile Pulled Pork last week which was great for quick quesadillas or rice bowls. There are so many recipes I have marked to try including her Slow Cooker Nutty Coconut Granola and Taco Rice (all pictured in collage below).

In addition to sharing Mary’s healthy chicken and broccoli stir fry recipe, we are giving away a copy of her newest cookbook, The Weekday Lunches & Breakfast Cookbook, as well as a bonus copy of her first cookbook, The Weeknight Dinner Cookbook. These are two cookbooks I feel will be a wonderful addition to anyone’s kitchen – especially busy families like mine and hers. These cookbooks are true gems! See directly below to enter giveaway. Recipe follows.

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Asian Chicken and Broccoli Stir Fry

• Author: Mary Younkin | The Weekday Lunches & Breakfasts Cookbook
• Prep Time: 10 minutes
• Cook Time: 15 minutes
• Total Time: 25 minutes
• Yield: 4-5 servings
• Category: Dinner
• Method: Skillet
• Cuisine: Asian

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Quick, easy and healthy! This Asian Chicken and Broccoli Stir Fry from The Weekday Lunches & Breakfasts Cookbook is a great addition to your weekday lunch or dinner rotation.

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Ingredients

• 1 1/2 tablespoons light flavored oil or refined coconut oil, divided
• 1 medium onion, sliced thin
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 1/2 lbs boneless skinless chicken thighs, cut into 2-inch pieces
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch
• 1/3 cup low-sodium soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 1 tablespoon chili paste
• 3 cups bite-size broccoli florets
• Cooked rice for serving (optional)

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Instructions

1. Heat large stainless steel skillet over medium-high heat. Add 1/2 tablespoon of oil, and let it warm for a few seconds. Add the onion strips and let them cook for 2 minutes. Add the garlic and stir. Push the garlic and onion to the outside of the pan.
2. Pour the remaining oil in the center of the skillet. Add the chicken. Spread across the skillet and sprinkle with cornstarch. Cook without stirring for 2 minutes, until browned, and then use a sturdy metal spatula to lift and flip each piece of chicken. Cook for 1 minute.
3. While the chicken is cooking, stir together the soy sauce, honey and chili paste. Add the sauce to the skillet and stir to combine.
4. Add the broccoli on top of the other ingredients and cover with lid. Cook for 2 minutes. The broccoli should be bright green and barely softened. Remove the lid and stir, scraping up any bits of sauce or meat from the bottom of the skillet. Simmer 1 minute to thicken the sauce, stirring frequently. Serve on its own or over rice, if desired.

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Notes

Great for meal prep: Store this in an airtight container for up to 3 days. Reheat in the microwave or on the stove. This can be stored in one large container or portioned into individual servings for storage and reheating.

Note: Boneless skinless chicken breasts can be used in place of thighs in this recipe (I used chicken breast because it’s what I had in freezer). However, breasts will cook faster, so take care not to overcook.

Looking for more skillet meals that are great for make-ahead lunches or dinners? Check these out:

Skillet Italian Sausage and Peppers

Skillet Lemon Pepper Chicken with Artichokes, Mushrooms and Asparagus

Southwest Chicken Skillet

Sweet Potato Skillet Tex Mex Style

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I don’t always crave heavy meat and potato meals like this one but recently I picked up a package of short ribs from Costco and wanted to treat my husband with something a little different than what we usually have for dinner. He loves short ribs and it’s something he would typically order out. My friend Julie has posted some pretty amazing looking short rib recipes over the years and I’ve always wanted to try making them myself. These Slow Cooker Barbecue Short Ribs turned out absolutely amazing – I was pretty proud of myself considering how inexperienced I am with cooking cuts of beef like this. Let’s be honest though, it’s hard to mess up tender beef like short ribs in the slow cooker.

I quickly browned the short ribs before setting them to cook in the slow cooker for several hours. If you are in the market for a new slow cooker I highly recommend this Crock-Pot Slow Cooker with Stovetop Browning, I’ve been using it for the past year and it has been so awesome to skip the whole brown in a skillet step when it comes to slow cooker recipes!! Seriously, a game changer. Love it.

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Click here to pin this Chinese Five Spice Pork Chops with Broccoli recipe!

One of my goals for the upcoming new year is to start cooking from my cookbooks again. I have a pretty massive collection of cookbooks that I cherish and love, but sadly don’t cook from as much as I used to. Over the years, I’ve become accustomed to creating recipes from scratch to share here on the blog and my cookbooks have been neglected in the process. One of my recent cookbook purchases is a fantastic and practical cookbook called Sheet Pan Suppers and today’s Chinese Spice Pork Chops with Broccoli was inspired from it.

Today’s post is also for this month’s Recipe Redux – the Recipe Redux is a monthly recipe challenge where we focus on a theme and recreate a recipe with a healthier twist. This month’s theme was Grab a Book and Cook, so I was excited to do just that! Since the Recipe Redux is celebrating it’s 54th month we were to find a recipe on page 54 or 154 of a nearby cookbook and reinvent a healthy version of it. I picked up Sheet Pan Suppers and found a recipe using an ingredient that I was defrosting for dinner – pork chops. It happens to be on page 123 (oops!!) because I missed the little page detail until later (I blame my holiday brain!).

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Click here to pin this slow cooker pork tenderloin recipe!

I’m back with another pork tenderloin recipe. The Roasted Chili Maple Pork Tenderloin I shared back in November was my introduction to cooking with pork tenderloin and it turns out many of you love this cut of meat too. I’m amazed how much my entire family loves it and I can’t believe I have avoided cooking it for so long.

This time, I decided to try something different and cook it using my slow cooker. Yep, that tenderloin was cooked in the slow cooker and finished off under the broiler. I tried this new-to-me-method after seeing a recipe for Teriyaki Pork Tenderloin in The Healthy Slow Cooker Revolution cookbook from America’s Test Kitchen (if you missed it, I’m giving away a copy of this cookbook plus 3 others this week here). I wanted so bad to make the Teriyaki Pork Tenderloin recipe but I was missing some pretty key ingredients so I had to improvise and try something a little different.

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As much as I love salads, I haven’t been into them so much lately. I think I’m kind of bored with them maybe? That’s really what it is. We all get into our routines with what we eat, and variations of my super salad just hasn’t been cutting it these days. This salad though, this salad got me and my friend Julie excited last week.

This simple Asian Chopped Salad was the result of what we thought were going to be vegetarian dumplings. We created a vegetarian filling to try in a dumpling but to be honest, I wasn’t thrilled with how they were turning out. While Julie was cutting out her dumplings into a round shape with a biscuit cutter, the outer scraps were collecting into a pile on the cutting board. Being from the “waste not” mentality, I couldn’t bear to throw them in the trash, so I fried them up in a little bit of oil until they were crisp. We added them to our “reject” vegetarian dumpling filling and voila – this amazing salad was born.

I love everything about this salad. The crunch from the veggies and the fried wonton scraps makes it so good. And the dressing was incredibly simple – a little rice vinegar, sesame oil and soy sauce.

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Last week my friend Julie and I had a play date. We’ve been wanting to get together for a while, and even though she lives just a little over an hour from me, it seems like it’s always hard to find the time with both of our busy schedules.

We talked about cooking up some lunch, playing with our cameras and just hanging out but little did I know that our time together was going to stir up both of our creative juices in the kitchen. Personally, I’ve been in somewhat of a cooking slump since the holidays, really not in the mood to try anything new…basically it’s been survival mode around here with lots of easy pasta dishes and big pots of soup. That’s not a bad thing. But I’ve missed the excitement and energy I get when I start playing around in the kitchen, and of course I’ve been wanting to share new stuff with all of you!

Our plan that day was to learn how to make Chinese dumplings together. It’s one of my kids’ favorite things to order when we pick up take-out and something I’ve been wanting to get better at making at home. Well, it turns out, Julie was a natural at putting these dumplings together. They turned out delicious and my kids scarfed them down at dinner time. I’m seriously so excited about making them again and experimenting with different types of fillings.

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I stumbled onto this wing recipe on A New York Foodie right before Super Bowl Sunday.  Wings were on the menu, but I hadn’t decided how I wanted to cook them yet.  I loved the flavorful list of ingredients that went into the marinade.  Don’t be intimidated by the length of the list…what’s great about marinades is you do most of the work ahead of time, then the marinade does rest of the work while you go on with your day.  I let the wings sit in the marinade in the fridge for about 8 hours.  They baked up nicely and we enjoyed them alongside some crunchy veggies for dinner.

Caribbean Chicken Wings

Ingredients:

• 1 habanero, seeded and chopped
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 tablespoon sugar
• 2 teaspoons fennel seed
• 2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
• 2 teaspoons allspice
• 2 teaspoons dried thyme
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 4 garlic cloves, chopped
• 4 green onions, chopped
• 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1/4 cup lime juice
• 1/4 cup orange juice
• 7 pounds chicken wings

Directions:

1. In a food processor, blend together all the ingredients but the chicken until smooth. Reserve 1 cup of marinade. Place chicken wings into a large resealable plastic bag and pour remaining marinade over them. Seal and marinate in the refrigerator 4 to 6 hours.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line 2 sheet trays with parchment. Remove chicken from bag and place on the baking sheets. Bake 20 minutes. Meanwhile, in a small saucepan bring reserved marinade to a boil. Reduce by 1/3 until it thickens slightly, about 10 minutes. After 20 minutes, remove chicken from oven. Brush chicken with the glaze. Raise the heat to 400 degrees F and cook chicken until cooked through, another 20 minutes.

Recipe from Sunny Anderson, Food Network

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Why don’t I make stir fry more often?  It’s such an easy meal to throw together, and you can change it up every time.  I was scrambling to figure out dinner for Larry and I the other night at um…let’s say 5ish, the kids were having pasta and I just wasn’t in the mood for pasta.  I had an oversupply of broccoli in the fridge (thanks to Publix’s $1  bags of florets this week!) so I knew broccoli had to be a main ingredient.  Looking in the freezer for ideas I saw shrimp.  Frozen shrimp are so great to have on hand because they are so quick to defrost and cook.  So stir fry it was.

I like to cook up the shrimp in the wok first with some garlic, ginger and a couple teaspoons of oil.  Once its cooked I set it aside and then add the veggies to the hot pan.  For this stir fry I used sliced onion, broccoli florets, water chestnuts and edamame.  The combination was perfect.  I put together a basic Asian sauce out of some staples and dinner was served.

Oh and don’t forget the chopsticks…I love eating with chopsticks at home, makes me feel like I’m having “takeout”, and I tend to eat slower with them.  Just one of those mental tricks I guess.  Larry was a big fan of this stir fry, he said it was the best one I’ve made so far.  I’m happy with that compliment! 🙂

Shrimp, Broccoli and Edamame Stir Fry

Ingredients:

• 1 lb shrimp, peeled and deveined
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 tsp canola oil
• 1 tsp fresh ginger, minced (or from the jar)
• 2 cups broccoli florets
• 1 onion, thinly sliced
• 1 can sliced water chestnuts
• 1 cup frozen edamame, defrosted
• 2-3 TB rice vinegar
• 2 TB soy sauce
• 2 tsp corn starch
• 1/2 tsp sesame oil
• 2 tsp chile garlic sauce
• couple of splashes of fish sauce

Directions:

1. In a small bowl, combine rice vinegar, soy sauce, cornstarch, sesame oil, chile garlic sauce and fish sauce.
2. Heat wok over medium high heat. Add oil, garlic, ginger and shrimp and cook until shrimp are just pink, about 2-3 minutes. Set shrimp aside.
3. Add onion and broccoli to hot wok. Cook for about 2 minutes, then add edamame and water chestnuts. Continue to cook for about 2 more minutes. Add back in shrimp and sauce and toss to combine, cook for about 2-3 minutes longer. (I like my veggies crisp, but if you prefer, cook a little longer for softer veggies.)

Happy Friday to everyone!  What are your plans this weekend?  The Gators are playing a big game Saturday night so that’s what we’ll be doing…the rest of the weekend is up to the kids!  🙂

Have a great weekend!

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I spotted a shrimp recipe on Pioneer Woman’s amazing site recently and couldn’t wait to make it. I love shrimp, and love anything spicy even more so this was exactly something I knew I had to make. Last night, I was ready to fire up the grill to cook up the shrimp when something like a monsoon came over us. Lightning, rain, thunder, wind…all of it, and very typical of summer in Florida…so needless to say, I wasn’t overly excited about standing in the porch watching delicate shrimp cook up on the grill. It was time to improvise…

I had a ton of veggies to use up in the fridge…and a brand new wok that I got for a steal at IKEA. So stir fry it will be.

In a bowl I mixed together some hot chili sauce, a little oil, soy sauce, rice vinegar and a couple splashes of fish sauce. Oh and I pressed about 4 or 5 cloves of garlic in there too. I chopped a ton of veggies…squash, zucchini, onion, red pepper and more garlic. Forget the grill…this stir fry was awesome!

Firecracker Shrimp Stirfry

Yield: 2- 4 servings

Ingredients:

• 1 lb shrimp, peeled and deveined
• 2 TB hot chili sauce (I use Sriracha - adjust amount to your taste)
• 1 TB soy sauce
• 1 TB rice vinegar
• 1 TB oil
• couple of splashes fish sauce
• 4-5 garlic cloves, pressed or minced
• small pinch of salt, big pinch of pepper
• 1-2 zucchinis, chopped in quarters
• 1-2 yellow squash, chopped in quarters
• 1 onion, thinly sliced
• 1 red pepper, sliced in thin strips
• 2-3 garlic cloves, minced

Directions:

1. Combine chili sauce, soy sauce, rice vinegar, oil, fish sauce, garlic, salt and pepper in a bowl to make a sauce. Toss shrimp in sauce and coat completely.
2. Heat wok over medium-high heat. Add a couple tsp canola oil into wok and sear the shrimp. Once shrimp are just cooked, take out and set aside. Add chopped vegetables and garlic into wok. Cook over medium-high heat for about 5-8 minutes until veggies start to soften. Once veggies are slightly cooked, add back in shrimp and toss to combine, cook for 2-3 minutes more. Serve with cooked soba noodles. Season with more soy sauce, fish sauce or chili sauce to taste.

Follow AggiesKitchen on Instagram and show us what recipes you are making from the blog! Use the hashtag #aggieskitchen - I'd love to see what you are cooking up!

While I was in D.C. last weekend I visited the Julia Child exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of American History. Now, I’m almost embarrassed to admit this, but I really don’t know much about Ms. Julia Child. I know of her…but have never watched her shows. With “Julie & Julia” out in the theaters today, the book and then finally after visiting this exhibit, I must say, I am intrigued. I may have to dig up some old shows of hers and settle in on the couch one afternoon and just watch…she seemed like such a lovely spirit. Enjoy a peek in her kitchen…apparently it’s all her stuff, donated by her and set up exactly how she wanted it.

PS…Want to join in on the Cooking Light Virtual Supper Club fun? Check out Cooking Light’s Test Kitchen Blog featuring Aggie’s Kitchen and other great bloggers!

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