Honey BBQ Chicken Tenders & Cheesy Brown Rice

This was a really great combination. I actually made these recipes a month or so ago (I just hadn’t blogged about them yet) and now that I’m typing about them I want to make them again! The rice is really easy and not so much a “recipe” as a good idea to combine two ingredients, but it makes a perfect side dish for this chicken. You might be thinking “Why combine honey and BBQ sauce on my own when I could just buy Honey BBQ Sauce at the store?” I thought that too but this really did taste better somehow. Add a side salad and you have a complete quick and simple dinner recipe!

Source: Adapted from “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Fattening” by Devin Alexander


Honey BBQ Chicken Tenders
Ingredients:
¼ c BBQ Sauce (find one with no more than 9g sugar and <1g fat per tablespoon – I used Kraft Light Original)
2T honey
¼ t garlic powder
Salt & pepper to taste
About 1 lb of chicken tenders
Olive oil spray

Directions:
1.    Mix the BBQ sauce and honey in a small bowl and set aside.
2.    Sprinkle the garlic powder, salt & pepper over the tenderloins and toss them to cover.
3.    Place a large nonstick skillet over high heat. When hot, lightly mist the skillet with olive oil spray and add the chicken tenders side by side in a single layer (work in batches if necessary, the chicken should sizzle when it hits the pan or it’s not hot enough). Cook the strips until they are brown on the outside and no longer pink inside. Turn the heat to low and put all the tenders back into the pan and pour the BBQ sauce mixture over them. Gently stir until they are well coated and the sauce is warm. Remove the pan from heat. Let the tenders sit in the pan for 5 minutes and then toss them again. Sauce will thicken upon standing. Serve immediately.

Yields 3 servings. Weight Watchers Points Plus: 5 per serving.
*The serving size really depends on how many chicken tenders come in your pound of chicken! The original recipe assumed there would be 16 tenders so it divided into 4 servings, but my tenders must have been larger because there were 9 tenders, so I made it 3 servings.


Cheesy Brown Rice
Ingredients:
1 c cooked brown rice, just cooked or re-heated (hot)
2 Laughing Cow Cheese Wedges (I like to use one light swiss and one Queso Fresco & Chipotle…gives it a little kick but not too much) cut up into smaller pieces

Directions:
1.    In a small bowl, stir the cheese pieces into the hot rice until well combined. Serve immediately.

Yields 2 servings. Weight Watchers Points Plus: 3 per serving