This Chicken Carnitas with Acorn Squash recipe has become our go-to chicken recipe at our house.
Let’s get real…we eat a lot of chicken at our house. It’s fairly inexpensive (at least compared to steak), easy to cook, goes with a variety of different ingredients and can be prepared in a bunch of different ways. Making it a staple weekly item for us.
That being said, we still get stuck in what I call “chicken ruts”. By that I mean that I tend to prepare chicken in the same boring way each week (sautéed in a pan with lemon and herbs). I wanted to shake it up a bit, so I found this Healthy Chicken Carnitas recipe on Pinterest.
I made it last week and it was so delicious! The chicken has so much flavor that it’s become my favorite way to prepare chicken. I also really like the fact that once you get all the ingredients into the pot, you basically throw it in the oven and forget about it until it’s time to shred it. As a mom of two, I don’t often have time to prepare dishes that take a lot of different steps or use a lot of different pans. This dish takes two pans tops and doesn’t have very many steps, so it’s my kind of dish.
We served the chicken carnitas in acorn squash “boats” and LOVED it! I had never made acorn squash before but now that we’ve tried them, I’m a big fan. It has a nutty flavor and really pairs great with the flavor of the chicken. Plus you serve the chicken inside the actual acorn squash, so no need to dirty of plate! Can you tell I really hate washing dishes?
I think the key step to making this dish so amazing is taking the extra step to caramelize the chicken. I added a drizzle of honey over the shredded chicken and placed it on a pan in the broiler for 4 minutes and it’s so amazing. The honey gets caramelized and that’s when you get those great brown bits of chicken. Trust me and don’t skip this step!
I have it on our meal plan for this week. Instead of serving it with acorn squash we are going to try it taco style!
What’s your favorite chicken recipe?
