Salted Rye Chocolate Sable Valentines

If you’re looking for a last-minute Valentine’s Day gift, look no further. These salted rye chocolate sable cookies are simply decadent. No one would ever guess they are a breeze to make. If your significant other loves acts of service or gifts, this would be a good, frugal option to show your love this Valentine’s Day. Better yet, if quality time is what they seek, you can make it a cookie baking event. It’s a great treat for little kids as well. And the recipe is easy enough for small hands who want to help!

The recipe, by the way, is from the book Wild Sweetness by the remarkable Thalia Ho. I’ve made it a personal goal to try every single recipe in the book by end-of-year. So far, everything has been absolutely delicious. More importantly, what I like about this book are the simple baking techniques and ingredients. I shy away from recipe books that have complicated techniques or rare ingredients. While special, they aren’t exactly practical – and simple living is what I am all about.

If you wish to peruse other Valentine’s Day gift ideas, check out my past posts:

A note on baking:

While I don’t keep a horde of baking products in my pantry, I do find that having a reliable few makes the process WAY more enjoyable. The few products I list below are definite necessities for me. Some have gone so far as to support my blog or my bakery. I hope you find them useful too!

Kitchen Aid Mixer (goodbye to pouring sweat into baked goods. I’m more of a mix-and-walk-away type of gal)
Kitchen scale (super handy for baking! I prefer to weigh out the exact measurements rather than rely on cups and spoons)
Good bakeware set (Caraway has a curated set perfect for minimalists).

Salted Rye Chocolate Sable Recipe

Ingredients:

1 cup + 1 teaspoon (130 g) all-purpose flour
3/4 cup + 1 teaspoon (80g) rye flour
1/2 cup (50 g) Dutch processed cocoa powder
1 teaspoon finely-ground coffee
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (230 g) unsalted butter at room temperature
1 cup _ 1 tablespoon (235g) light brown sugar
2/3 cup (115 g) finely chopped dark chocolate
Maldon sea salt for finishing

The Process:

Whisk together all-purpose flour, rye flour, cocoa, coffee, baking soda, and salt in a bowl.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar on medium speed until pale caramel in color, about 3 minutes.
Set speed on low as you tip in the dry ingredients. Beat until a soft dough forms, for only a few seconds.
Mix in the chocolate until distributed.
Divvy the dough into two halves.
Roll each half into a log that is about 1.5 inches in diameter and wrap in plastic wrap.
Refrigerate for one hour or until firm enough to slice.
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Unwrap the logs and transfer to a cutting board. Use a sharp knife to slice off 1/2 inch thick rounds. You may need to reshape the log if it squashes a little during the cutting. Also, if you hit a chocolate chunk, part of the log may break apart. Just use your fingers to mold it back together.
Place the rounds a few inches apart to allow for spreading.
Bake for 10 -12 minutes.
Remove from oven and let stand on the sheet for a few minutes. Sprinkle with Maldon sea salt while warm from the ovens. You can complete the cooling on a wire rack, but I just leave my cookies on the pan.

These cookies are best eaten right away, but can be stored in an air-tight container at room temperature for up to five days. Good luck resisting these sable cookies, though. They are heavenly.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

One Pot Beef Stroganoff

This post may contain affiliate links. Please see my disclosure to learn more.

All I’ve wanted to write about recently are recipes. Today I wanted to share with you a one-pot beef stroganoff recipe that I tried. You may have noticed by now my soft spot for nostalgic meals. Not always the healthiest of options, but foods that tug at my heartstrings. This beef stroganoff is cozy, simple, and easy. Top sirloin is my meat of choice. With beef, the quality shows in the taste and texture. I slice them thinly and buy my meat from Whole Foods. Generally, I err on the side of less since I am not a huge meat eater. Instead, I substitute more mushrooms. We serve stroganoff with egg noodles, which were left over from the chicken noodle soup recipe I posted a week ago.

To be honest, I have been greatly enjoying our new Caraway Home Cookware set and looking forward to cooking meals at home! Which is a great thing with this inflation in tow. Cooking at home has always saved us money, but I’ve never been more proud of it as I am now. Southern California prices for dining out are getting out of hand. Fast-food prices are bordering on $15 for our family of two. A mediocre meal would cost us about $30. Bagels run $5 or more. By making cooking enjoyable with this new cookware set, we are saving hundreds of dollars per week! I wrote a detailed and honest review of the cookware set here.

Anywho this beef stroganoff is delicious! It’s perfect for a lazy night in, when it’s freezing cold outside and my energy is drained. It only uses up one-pot, so the clean-up is simple. I prefer to use the Dutch Oven from Caraway Home.

For the curious, the dish is from East Fork Pottery. We’ve been fans of East Fork for years!

Shrimp Cajun Pasta in Tomato Cream Sauce

This post may contain affiliate links. Please see my disclosure to learn more.

It’s almost time to turn back the clocks! One of my favorite days of the year, I look forward to daylight savings end like I look forward to holidays. We’ve got plans to stay in, cozy up in bed. Recently, the weather has turned cold, and we’ve been making tea and reaching for wool socks. Plans include a pancake breakfast, setting up holiday lights, and watching movies on the rug. For this special day, I like to do less, and take it easy. In case you need a quick recipe to feed the fam without dirtying up more than one pot, I would recommend this easy shrimp Cajun pasta in tomato cream sauce. We just made it this week, and I am in LOVE.

In our rendition, I substituted the Cajun spice with Evermill’s Captain’s Blend. It’s a modern twist on a classic flavor, and is part of our Evermill Countertop Spice Rack Collection. Narrowing down my spices to a select few simplifies my cooking life. I used to meticulously follow recipes to the tee and bought spices for one-off recipes I wanted to try. I was wasting money on spices that I never used for anything else. Now I embrace substitutions. Evermill’s Countertop Spice Rack Collection is all I need. It’s beautiful, practical, and minimalist.

We also have switched to Caraway Home’s Cookware Set. I wrote an entire review here. It has been a joy cooking in these easy-to-clean, lovely-to-use cookware. The set is $150 OFF if you buy the entire set, which comes with a life-changing storage solution perfect for minimalist homes. It also comes with two trivets, and the color of your choice. I recommend it to all minimalist, tiny-home dwellers who love to cook.

I hope this recipe helps ease the load. Enjoy your long and lazy weekend!

Our Favorite Chicken Noodle Soup Recipe

I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to share our favorite chicken noodle soup recipe, but here it is! My husband loves chicken noodle. I still remember our college days. We would head to Soup Plantation (RIP) for a date night when we wanted to ‘splurge’ on dinner, coupon in tow. I remember getting excited every time a “Buy One, Get One 50% OFF” voucher showed up on our door. We would clip it, saving it for a special weeknight pick-me-up. Soup Plantation is now long gone, and I lament the kids who will never experience lining up at the salad bar with promises of pizza, bread, brownies, and sundaes ahead. I feel even sorrier for my husband and I, having lost another ‘tradition’ with the passing of time.

Since then, we’ve adopted this chicken noodle soup recipe after our once-roommate made it. There are so many things to love about this. Beyond the nostalgia, there are plenty of fresh herbs that bring this soup to life. An extremely easy process puts it at the top of my list. And now with soup season upon us, I gander the recipe will be memorized come Spring.

I like to use left-over chicken breast from our easy chicken recipe. Chicken stock comes by way of Not-Quite-Chicken bouillon cubes and water. I like that we can alter the saltiness by adding more water. Premade chicken stock is fine and all, but we find the sodium a bit too much. Personally, I like to lay the herbs on thick, but Mike prefers to strictly follow the recipe. It really is a great staple in the kitchen. I hope you agree!

By the way, we’ve been loving our entire Caraway Home Cookware Set ($150 OFF!). I just cooked this chicken noodle in the dutch oven, with plenty of room to spare. The interior of these pots and pans are so easy to clean with a soft sponge. I wrote an entire review on this recently, which you can find here.

Easy Cheesy Lasagna

This post may contain affiliate links. Please see my disclosure to learn more.

I can’t believe I have never posted my easy cheesy lasagna recipe on the blog. This is the recipe I have been serving the boys (aka Mike’s friends) since the beginning of our college days. It’s the only recipe that I still pull up during Friendsgiving dinners as a nostalgic piece – the kind that takes us back to when we were living crammed in a dusty, run-down home because it was the cheapest rent we could find. I also used to make this recipe to feed 14 boys at the Santa Ana Boys and Girls Club when I used to cook family meals for them once a month!

Having learned it in college, it is obviously simple to make. It’s perfect for a quick weeknight family meal. It takes only a handful of inexpensive ingredients, and hardly any time and effort. But it’s delicious, and one of my favorite recipes during the colder months. It was still a hit at last years Friendsgiving, even after we’ve all moved on from instant ramen and canned meat! And if it’s a hit with college boys, I’m sure it’ll be welcomed by little ones as well! Serve it with freshly made sourdough bread and you’ll be the star of the show.

Easy Cheesy Lasagna Recipe

Ingredients

Please note: these ingredients are for a 9″x13″ baking dish with a bit of depth (think aluminum trays that they sell at the grocery store). It will yield a fairly tall lasagna, which I like. It will also serve a large party of 6 people or more.

If you have a smaller family (1-2 people), I would recommend using a 9″x13″ baking dish that’s shallow and cutting the ingredients in half. When I cook for just Mike and I, I use our glass pyrex baking dish. It yields a fairly flat lasagna, but then I take two lasagna squares and stack them on top of each other to make it taller when serving. This works for us, as we don’t want lasagna for an entire week!

Serves 6+ people. For a family of 1-2, cut the ingredients in half.

Lasagna noodles (1 box is more than enough. Depending on your baking dish, there may be extra).
Sour cream (16 oz, depending on your baking dish)
Tomato Sauce (2 jars, depending on your baking dish)
Provolone Cheese (2 packets of circular cheese slices)
Mozzarella Cheese (for sprinkling on top.)
Oregano (for sprinkling on top). We use the Evermill’s oregano along with their other spices. I truly believe quality spices make a difference. Some store-bought spices are so “weak” that they hardly taste like anything at all. But I stand by Evermill’s products. I have told friends and family that their spice rack is the best wedding gift anyone could ask for. I wrote a thorough review of it here, along with a coupon code WELCOME30 to give TheDebtist audience $30 OFF their counter-top spice rack.

The Process:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Boil water in a large pot. I like to use our cream dutch oven from Caraway Home. We have their entire cookware set and it’s a minimalist’s dream. They are beautiful and honestly the only pots and pans you would need in order to do all your cooking.
Cook lasagna noodles until al dente per the box’s instructions. If you make homemade pasta noodles like we sometimes do, then it should only take 1-2 minutes.
Drain the pasta noodles in a colander and run them under cold water to prevent sticking.
Start layering your lasagna! Place a thin layer of sauce on the bottom of the 9″x13″ baking dish.
Layer pasta noodles (which happen to be about 13″) over the sauce. It takes about 3 noodles vertically placed.
Place about 5 slices of provolone cheese on top of the pasta.
Spread sour cream on top of the provolone cheese.
Layer on some pasta, and start the process over. Moving forward the order goes: pasta, sauce, provolone cheese, sour cream; pasta, sauce, provolone cheese, sour cream.
If you are using a whole box of pasta noodles, then it will create 5-6 layers. Make sure to ration out the other ingredients.
On the final layer, end with pasta and a generous amount of tomato sauce on top. I then liberally sprinkle oregano and mozzarella cheese.
Cover your creation with tin foil and place in the oven to bake at 400 degrees F for 20-25 minutes.
Remove the tin foil and bake for another 5-10 minutes.
Remove from the oven and let cool before serving.

In case you were wondering, this batch was the shallower version stacked on top of each other. Our platters are from East Fork Pottery, a company that I’ve been in partnership now for years. We use their beautiful dishware EVERYDAY in our household. They are not only sturdy, functional, and dish-washer safe, they are also gosh darn gorgeous! Recently they launched a BLUE and BLACK colorway and I am drooling over them. Thankfully, they were added to the core collection and are yours for the taking.

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Peach and Nutmeg Scones with Honey-Vanilla Icing

There are certain recipes that resonate with me, scones being one of them. This rote recipe is a favorite in our household. Often, I would experimentally trade out ingredients based on what lies at hand. This is an especially useful trick of the trade, as I like to bake seasonably. This week, it happened to be that peaches were on sale, and fall weather was present in my mind. I reached for the nutmeg on my minimalist spice rack from Evermill (the only one a person needs), and decided to add something sweet, cozy honey-vanilla icing on top. The scones ended up feeling like a warm hug, as my husband and I devoured one straight out of the the oven. Might I suggest pairing with a chai latte, or your favorite PSL? Light a candle to amp up the hygge.

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour, plus additional for dusting.
3 tbsp. sugar, plus additional for sprinkling
1 tbsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup plus 2 tbs unsalted butter, cut into small pieces and chilled
1 cup diced peaches
2 large eggs
1/3 cup heavy cream plus extra for brushing.
1 tsp vanilla extract
Cinnamon for sprinkling

Useful Baking Tools

A mixing bowl or two Measuring Cups
A whisk
A fork
A bench scraper (or a knife works)
A knife
A marble pastry slab, or a clean countertop to roll dough out on
Baking Tray
Parchment Paper
A pastry brush

The Process:

Preheat the oven to 400 F with a rack in the center.
Sift the flours, sugar, baking powder, nutmeg and salt in a large bowl. Add the butter pieces and with thumb and pointy finger, flatten the butter, pinching floury bits into it. Alternatively, you can use two knives to cut the butter into the flour mixture until it resembles small peas.
Stir in the peaches.
Whisk the eggs together in a separate bowl. Add heavy cream and vanilla to the egg mixture and whisk again until well mixed.
Stir the egg mixture into the flour mixture with a fork, mixing until just combined. I l liken the end result to one big, shaggy mess.
Lightly dust a clean work surface (I use a marble pastry slab, but a wooden surface works well too), with flour. Turn the dough onto this surface and knead until just combined. If the dough is too wet, add more flour to get the right consistency. It should be a bit crumbly.
Shape the dough into a square (6 inch x 6 inch). Cut the dough into four 3-inch squares, then cut the smaller squares into triangles.
Arrange the scones on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Brush the tops with heavy cream using a pastry brush. Sprinkle the tops generously with sugar and cinnamon.
Bake for 16-18 minutes or until the tops are golden brown. Transfer the scones to a rack and cool for 5 minutes. Serve warm.

Honey-Vanilla Icing (optional)

I learned my icing recipe working midnight shifts as an early morning baker for Rye Goods. It’s a straight-forward base recipe of confectioner’s sugar, flavoring, and a form of liquid. I like to eyeball for consistency but for my beginner bakers, this recipe works in our situation.

Ingredients

1 cup confectioner’s sugar
1 tbsp honey
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 tablespoons milk

The Process:

Place all ingredients in a Kitchen Aid stand mixer with the whisk attachment.
Whisk at setting 4 until the consistency is runny, like melted sour cream.
Use a spatula, spoon, or knife to drizzle over your cooled scones. If you want to get particular, use a pipette.

In this recipe, I chose nutmeg and cinnamon but you can definitely make this your own. Ginger or cardamom would also make great alternatives for peaches. Likewise, you could choose apple or apricots. My favorite thing about scones is that the recipe is so easy to change. Definitely check out my other scone recipes:

I hope you enjoyed this! And for the curious, the bowl is from East Fork Pottery, an affiliate that I’ve been boasting about forever and ever.

My Sourdough Bread Recipe

Why has it taken me this long to share my sourdough bread recipe? I’ve gone and shared how I make banana bread, strawberry scones, bostock, but not my beloved bread? Seriously though, this is my favorite thing to bake. I have consistently made bread from scratch since learning how in January of 2018. Bread baking is one of my true loves in this world. And knowing how to bake sourdough bread from scratch is more important now than ever before.

We live in a world where highly-processed wheat is causing an inflammatory epidemic that has been linked to conditions such as autoimmune diseases and autism. Our gut microbiomes are off-kilter because processed foods are anything but nutritious. I have studied microbiology in Chile, gone through medical training in dental school, talked to farmers preserving ancient heritage grain, worked in a sourdough bread bakery, got my hands dirty volunteering on a farm for six months, and read multiple studies and books. All of this has lead me repeatedly to the following truths:

More people need to be making their meals at home.
We need to source ingredients that are local.
It is imperative to avoid anything packaged in plastic or pre-processed.

Look at the ingredient lists. Nix the preservatives. Be a part of the process. You can start this entire journey just by baking your own bread.

There are many recipes out there and I welcome you to try all of them as I have. Treat this one as a guideline rather than stone-etched truth. Even I change my ratios all the time! It depends on how me and my starter are feeling that day, or what my schedule looks like. My best recommendation is to approach it like you would a science project. And just have fun!

My Sourdough Bread Recipe

Ingredients to Make Sourdough Bread:

650 g water
200 g starter – ours is self-made from scratch, using the Tartine Bread’s method.
200 g whole wheat flour – my favorite is Red Fife, Rye, or Sonora from Tehachipi Grain Project in Southern California
800 g bread flour – my favorite brands are Bob’s Red Mill or King Arthur
20 g Salt
Additional 50 g water
Rice flour for dusting

A word on ingredients: High-quality ingredients lead to high-quality bread. It isn’t rocket science. When I started out, I was buying low quality flour which never translated to decent bread. It wasn’t until I started buying fresh grains and then milling the grains myself into flour that I saw a big difference. I bought the Mockmill which is perfect for a household that bakes often. I used grains from a local farmer and had to pick up bags of ancient heritage grain from a farmer’s market in Long Beach. But I understand that a personal mill is quite the investment. Luckily, the popularization of microbakeries and microfarms providing freshly milled flour has occurred since I first started making bread. I recommend Rye Goods and Ecology Center for my Southern California audience.

Materials:

Silicone bench scraper
Metal bench scraper
2 Round bread proofing baskets with Liners
Cast Iron Combo Cooker
Heat-Proof Gloves That Work (Regular baking gloves won’t do! You need grilling or BBQ gloves)
Marble pastry slab (optional)
Kitchen Aid Pro 6500 (optional)
Glass mixing bowl (if you don’t have a Kitchen Aid Mixer Bowl)
Shaving blade with a bread lame (optional)
Kitchen Scale

A word on products: I got all of my materials from Williams Sonoma, which happens to be my favorite cooking store. I sincerely like the quality of goods there, and find that the higher price of some of these products are worth the splurge. I have kept all of my materials since day one, and have yet to find the need to replace them.

The Process of Making Sourdough Bread:

Place the mixing bowl (either glass if you don’t have a Kitchen Aid or the Kitchen Aid mixing bowl) onto the kitchen scale and tare it to 0. Have the kitchen scale setting to grams.
In the bowl, add 650 g of water, 200 g of starter, 200 g of whole wheat flour and 800 g of bread flour.
Using the dough attachment, mix the ingredients in your Kitchen Aid Mixer. If you don’t have an electric mixer, you can hand mix the dough. It takes a lot of work, but it’s actually kind of satisfying! Use the plastic bench scraper to scrape the dough from the sides of the bowl and move it to the center – so that no doughy bits stick to the sides. If it has mixed thoroughly enough in the stand mixer, the dough should pull away from the sides on its own.
Let the dough rest in the mixing bowl for 30 minutes.
Add 20 g of salt and 50 g of water to the mixing bowl. Mix until integrated, by hand or using the electric mixer.
Let rest for 30 minutes.
Turn the dough every 30 minutes for 3-4 hours. The amount of time depends on the temperature of your space. The warmer the temperature, the sooner the dough will finish fermenting. Likewise, the more active the starter, the quicker the dough will be ready. The most important thing is to look for texture. The dough should double in size and have an airy state. Turning the dough means scooping up the underbelly of the dough and folding it over itself. I do this 3 times with each “turn”, going around the bowl to make sure the dough is turned on all sides.
When the dough has doubled in size, turn the dough out from the mixing bowl onto a marble pastry slab. A wooden countertop works well too.
Flour the top part of the dough using either rice flour or bread flour. Using a metal bench scraper, cut the dough in half.
Take one of the halves. Flip the dough so that the floured side is down and the unfloured side is facing up. Gently fold half of the dough over itself so now a floured surface is on top and on the bottom. Using a metal bench scraper, shape the dough into a ball by dragging the dough towards you, then turning it a quarter turn and dragging it towards you again. Keep doing this until you get a boule shaped dough. Repeat with the other dough half.
Let the two boules rest on the pastry slab for 15 to 20 minutes before final shaping.
I like to shape these guys into batards. I do that by flouring the top of the dough, then flipping it over so the unfloured surface is exposed again. I proceed to make an envelope out of the dough. I grab the bottom section and fold it 2/3^rd of the way up. I then extend the left and right sides of the dough and fold them to the midline. Then, I take the top part of the “envelope” and fold it to the midline. I then grab the left and right sides of the dough and “braid” them toward the center. Lastly, I roll the farthest part of the dough at the top towards the bottom, and flip the dough over. This is all too confusing, so I do recommend watching videos online on how to shape a batard! It is super helpful.
Once you’ve shaped your dough, I let it rest for a minute and then place them in their bread basket, with the seams facing up.
I place the bread babies in the fridge for 12-24 hours. Make sure to cover the tops of the bread with a double-lined linen napkin to prevent the cold air from forming a tough layer. The longer you keep it in the fridge, the more sour it will get as the bread ferments for longer.
When you are ready to bake, turn on the oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit. Place the combo cooker in the oven so it preheats with the oven. You need a hot combo cooker to make the bread rise!
After the oven has preheated for 45 minutes, remove combo cooker (shorter pan) from the oven using really thick gloves (please don’t burn yourself!) and sprinkle rice flour on the bottom to prevent dough from sticking. Invert the bread baby from the basket onto the combo cooker. Take a blade and score the bread by making one big slash down the midline – you want to go about 1/8^th the depth of your dough. Slash it with precision and confidence!
Place the taller pan of the combo cooker on top as a lid, then place the entire combo cooker in the oven.
Bake bread for 25-30 minutes. I have baked bread in 4 different ovens since starting my journey and I can tell you that each one has a different baking time! If you’ve got a strong oven, definitely go on the quicker side.
Remove the top lid of the combo cooker and bake the bread for another 3-5 minutes. This will brown the crust of the bread.
Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack.
I recommend eating fresh bread within 2 days. Store in an air-tight container, away from cold drafts which makes the bread stale quicker. If you can’t finish a loaf of bread that quickly, I rec slicing it up and freezing them in a freezer proof bag.

I am a self-taught bread baker and I truly believe anyone can make gut-friendly bread in the comforts of their home. My recipe works for me 100% of the time. The challenge lies in technique and understanding the dough. Practice will only make you better. My starter has become my most loyal and trustworthy companion. It never fails me and I depend on it whole-heartedly. After you learn the nuances of bread baking and tasted the difference in fresh bread, you will never go back.

The Easiest Healthy Chicken Recipe

It seems to always come up when speaking with young people that there is a struggle with cooking good chicken. I find that unfortunate, as chicken is one of the healthy, staple ingredients in our home. But then again, I was in their shoes once. I remember being 22 years old and serving my husband (then boyfriend) and his best friend homemade Parmesan chicken. I followed the recipe online, and the house smelled gloriously of cheese. To my mortification and deathly embarrassment, the chicken was still raw when we started eating. Not pink raw, but sinewy raw. My sweet friend still kept trying to eat it as I wholeheartedly tried my best to stop him from putting my pride back together. Since then, I have learned how to make chicken consistently cooked-through, and delicious too. Not only that, but I have learned to make it efficiently, in terms of both money and time. I want to share with you the easiest healthy chicken recipe. We use this recipe almost weekly and I hope you do, too!

You can get really fancy with chicken, but today we will learn the basics. A few words before the recipe.

Get good quality chicken. I recommend splurging for ones found in Sprouts of Whole Foods, instead of the extremely pink or extremely pale plastic-wrapped breasts at cheaper grocery stores. Good quality chicken will shine through, regardless of what you season it with.
Season it with something. Even if it’s just salt and pepper.
Time the whole process as described in the instructions.
If you are unsure, stick a thermometer in there and make sure the internal temperature is 165 degrees Fahrenheit.

And now, on with the recipe!

Ingredients:

Chicken breasts (as many as you want)
Evermill Blend
Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper

The Process:

Heat up olive oil on a cooking pan with a matching lid on medium high heat. This is my favorite recommendation.
Meanwhile, rub Evermill blend on both sides of the chicken breasts. I recently wrote a review on the Evermill spice rack and I truly believe it is the best investment any young person hoping to learn the ways of the kitchen can make. It really leveled up my cooking, and I am not a novice. Out of all the spices on there, the Evermill blend is something you can only get at Evermill, and it is delicious with chicken. If anything, just buy the spice on its own. A side-note: When I was young, I failed to be generous with spices. Definitely rub on more than you think you will need. Make sure the surface area of the chicken is well-coated, and then some. If you don’t have the Evermill blend, then skip to step three.
Sprinkle salt and pepper on both sides of the chicken. Once again, be liberal. The first three steps should take no longer than a minute.
Once the olive oil is hot, place the chicken in the pan. Do not put on the lid. Let the chicken cook on medium-heat for one minute. It should fry one side to a brown color. Do time this process moving forward.
After one minute, flip the chicken onto the other side. Lower the heat to medium-low and put on the lid so that no steam escapes. Cook for 8 minutes. At this point, I literally turn on a timer and walk away from the stove. Or I prep dishes to eat with the chicken. This recipe really doesn’t take a lot of time at all!
After the timer goes off, turn off the flame and keep the lid on. Do not let steam out. Let sit on the stovetop for another 8 minutes. Don’t forget about that timer.
And voila! By now, your chicken should be cooked to perfection.