Fajita Chicken and Quinoa Skillet With Easy Avocado Cream Sauce
I realized we don’t share enough dinner recipes around here, so here we go. Changing that, my friends! This is a really tasty and pretty easy weeknight meal. It also makes leftovers, perfect for quick lunches. We talked last week about how to make fast real food meals, so, to go along with that theme we used leftover chicken made in the crock-pot. Actually, I’ve been using my instant pot a lot more recently, because I forget to put a chicken in the crock pot in the morning. Just being real, folks.
Mexican food is a staple around these parts. We love tacos, nachos, fajitas, oh my. It’s fairly easy to whip up and nobody ever complains. Mom win! So I knew making this fajita chicken skillet with quinoa would be a crowd-pleaser. Which is good when you’re a food blogger, because you end up making the same dish multiple times, spaced pretty close together, so you can get the recipe just the way you like in order to share it with you guys.
Honestly, I used to love quinoa, and then for awhile, I couldn’t stand it. The texture was very unappealing to me. One lazy Sunday afternoon, they were making quinoa on America’s Test Kitchen, and they made it very different than how I normally did myself. They toasted the quinoa with butter before adding water. Then, after it was done cooking, they let it rest for 5 minutes. Hello! This totally changed everything. It was nice and fluffy with a richer flavor, and not so slimy. Plus, they cooked it with butter – now that’s what I’m talking about. Everything is better with butter (especially grass-fed butter). Quinoa has made it back to the Knight’s kitchen table.
Normally for this recipe I use salsa verde for the avocado cream sauce, but for today’s post, regular red salsa was used. Why, you ask? Because we couldn’t get the darn jar of salsa verde open. Seriously, my husband and I both tried multiple times. I literally spent at least 15 minutes trying to open that jar to no avail. So, I moved on, grabbed a jar of regular ol’ delicious red salsa. Got to use what life throws you. Normally, about 95% of the food we purchase is organic, but we love Trader Joe’s Salsa Verde… even though it is not organic. My husband always asks (and he is the real stickler for organic food) for it and gets disappointed when I purchase another brand. Like I did for this photo shoot. See what I get for not buying Trader Joe’s? Well, the organic red salsa was Trader Joe’s brand, and it was easy to open.
If you want to make this recipe even faster, you can make the quinoa ahead of time. Or even double the quinoa and use it for meals throughout the week. That way when you go to make this, all you have to do is cook the peppers and onions, heat up some precooked chicken and the quinoa, and mix up the avocado cream sauce. Probably a 15-minute meal if you do it that way. I just love making life a little easier.
Fajita Chicken And Quinoa Skillet With Easy Avocado Cream Sauce
Ingredients
Quinoa
- 1 cup quinoa
- 2 cups water or broth broth adds much more flavor
- 2 Tbs coconut oil or butter
- 1 Tbs Fajita seasoning
Chicken Fajitas
- 3 peppers sliced red, yellow, orange, or green
- 1 onion sliced
- 2 Tbs coconut oil butter, or avocado oil
- 2 cups shredded pre-cooked chicken or you can grill some chicken breasts
- 1 Tbs fajita or taco seasoning
- Cilantro for topping optional
Avocado Cream Sauce
- 1 ripe avocado
- 1/2 cup salsa verde or your favorite salsa
- Juice from half a lime- about 1 Tbs
- pinch of salt
- Water to thin
Instructions
- Quinoa
- In a medium saucepan over medium heat, add butter or coconut oil and quinoa. Sauté, stirring frequently, until the quinoa starts to turn golden brown. Add water or broth, salt, pepper, and fajita seasoning. Bring to a simmer, cover and cook about 15 minutes. Take off heat and set aside covered for five minutes. Fluff with fork.
- Chicken Fajitas
- In a frying pan or cast iron skillet, add oil or butter, sliced onion and peppers. Sauté until onion starts to become translucent. Add in shredded chicken and fajita seasons. Stir to make sure fajita seasoning is covering chicken. Cook until hot.
- Avocado Cream Sauce
- Slice avocado in half, take out pit, and remove meat with a large spoon. Add to a blender or mash really well with a fork. Add in salsa verde, lime juice, and salt. Blend until well mixed, add in a tsp of water at a time if needed to be thinned. Set aside.
- On a plate, lay a bed of quinoa down, add with chicken and fajita veggies, and top with cream sauce. Enjoy.
Notes
1 Tbs cumin
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp salt
1 tsp oregano (or Italian seasoning)
pinch of red pepper flakes
Nutrition
