When my wife doesn’t want dinner, a common ‘go-to’ dinner for me is chicken tenderloins and broccoli. Olive oil in a pan, chicken, sprinkle with kosher salt and pepper, and dust with turmeric. Coat the broccoli with olive oil, and give them a shot of salt and pepper. Bake for 25 minutes. Done. It’s low-carb, and tasty.
Tonight The Missus didn’t want dinner… until I started making the chicken. She asked for some, so I added a couple more breast pieces. Sadly. we’re out of broccoli. It occurred to me that maybe I could prepare the chicken as usual, but then put it in a pan with a can of diced tomatoes, clicked red bell peppers, sliced green bell peppers, and some more turmeric. How does that sound?
More broadly, what are some good, low-carb recipes for chicken and turmeric?
Add cumin and coriander to that (ground.) And then add an accent spice like cloves, cinnamon, or cardamon. And then you’re getting into Middle Eastern/Indian territory with the spicing.
It sounds like you’re well on your way to making a very nice curry. As pulykamell said, cumin and coriander , plus cloves, cinnamon, cardamon, are great choices. And some chiles or chile powder for heat, to your tolerance.
Maybe some yogurt to thicken it up a bit and add some creaminess, if you have it. Maybe not, depends on what you’re feeling. It’s fun to decide in the moment what you’re in the mood for. Maybe more of a vindaloo, which is more tomato sauce-heavy.
Typically something like this would be served over rice. If you want to keep it low carb, when I was doing keto I’d do cauliflower rice a lot. It’s not a great sub for real rice because it doesn’t absorb anything, but it’s ok. Another idea would be making some flatbread out of almond flour, a kind of pseudo-naan, as a scooping matrix to enjoy the curry. I had good results with my low-carb bread making attempts.
Nice ideas all. Cooking by mood & feel is so much more rewarding than following a recipe from a book or website.
On the low carb front I found that brown basmati rice is far less carby / glycemic than is ordinary white rice. You can find it at a real Indian / South Asian grocery, but probably not at a conventional groc store. Might have to buy a 2 or 4 kilo bag though. It keeps well if you keep it in airtight (read “bugtight”) container(s).
Obviously basmati is traditional with south Asian cuisines, but I found it goes great with other spicings as well, whether Thai, Japanese, or even just US-style pot roast w brown gravy.
You still need to be portion-aware, but 1/2c of cooked brown basmati seemed about as carb-dangerous as 1 or 2 forkfuls of ordinary sticky white rice or white potatoes.
What? Do you mean to say not everybody has an entire kitchen cabinet full of 157 different spices?!? Does not compute
Good call on the brown basmati. Back in the day I used to prefer the nutty flavor of brown basmati rice, but Mrs. solost and the kids prefer white. So white basmati (which still has a lower glycemic index than other types of rice) became the go-to rice for long-grain uses in the solost household.
Then the younger sonlost said “why is the rice in the Chinese take-out so much better than yours, dad?” (It’s really not, son.) But Mrs. solost started buying jasmine rice. Ugh. I hate cooking with it. You have to rinse and drain it like 12 times or else it’s intolerably starchy. The only thing jasmine rice is better for is sushi. Even the younger sonlost is coming around on basmati.
My view is that when I’m cooking, I will make those decisions of taste. When they are cooking they can make those decisions. Obviously allowances will be made for hard dietary restrictions. But “taste” or “preference” is not a dietary restriction.
“Shut up and eat it, cook your own, or do without” is perfectly reasonable cook’s rejoinder to all complaint.
Just for fun, I checked my cabinet, and I have 35 individually labeled herbs and spices in their own square containers, plus I’m guessing close to double that in spice blends, spices still in their original packaging, etc. So I am probably not all that far off your number.
This is one of our standard chicken marinades - yogurt, turmeric, coriander, cumin, maybe a little cayenne. Marinate for a couple hours, and you’ll get nice tender chicken even if you screw up and overcook it slightly.
Yeah, I didn’t actually count mine, but I guessed at an upper range of what I might actually have, and put a ‘1’ in front for humorous exaggeration purposes
We always critique each other’s meals, even those that are incredible. When she creates a 10/10 dinner, my comment is often, “no capers, are we out?” (it’s an inside joke about how I often think a meal can be tweaked positively by adding capers)
Oh granted. We do the same thing. But it’s in a spirit of improvement, not in a spirit of complaint like @solost was getting from his audience.
Funny, but I think capers improve almost everything, while my late first wife called them “Little green balls of Hell” that would ruin almost anything. I did once get a laugh out of my straight-man proposal for caper ice cream. Damn I miss her.
I have plenty of ground cumin. For the coriander, I’ll have to grind the seeds. I’m not sure if I have any cardamon, but I think I might. How much cardamon, cloves (I assume ground?), and cinnamon?
Before I cut out carbs, it seemed like every time I ate white rice, I was two pounds heavier the next day. And I mean that literally.
I think I have some in the cupboard.
Now that I’m thinking of it, I’ve been using the small plastic container of turmeric someone gave the Spousal Unit several years ago. I’m not entirely sure if there’s any more in the cupboard.
If using cloves, I would go very very light—just a hint, a pinch. You don’t need a lot. Same generally goes for cardamom, though I sometimes use a tablespoon each of cumin, coriander, and cardamom in my Middle Eastern chicken spicing. But that can get pricey and not everyone appreciates cardamom (though it’s not as strong as you’d think.)
I normally lazy it out when it comes to things like this. I mix my yogurt with Penzy’s (my go to choice for buying decent quality mixes) Tandoori Mix or Garam Masala, salt, and some lemon juice. Marinate, and air fry for 14-18 minutes depending on thickness / cut of chicken. Easy peasy. But I agree 100%, a yogurt treatment for a few hours makes up for older, freezer stored chicken and is much more bulletproof for almost all later hot cooking techniques.
I’ll top with some Aleppo pepper or ground sumac berries if I want a bit of extra flavor on that particular blend, two additional spices I picked up from fellow foodies on this very SDMB.
ETA - I’m also in the 30+ individual spices group (and more mixes) but sometimes you don’t want to measure out the amounts and just want to use a mix, then add a bit of this and that to suit your mood.
