Cilantro Limelight Chicken Couscous

Do you need avocado? No... But it helps.

Cilantro Lime Chicken Couscous

Mmm, cilantro lime chicken couscous, you so good to me. As far as boneless chicken breast recipes go, this one is pretty cool. It uses a chicken glaze instead of the more traditional chicken marinade and it makes the chicken really flavorful. I should come clean and tell you that we took a lot of this recipe from another blog, which is here. We added a few tricks of our own though, so bear with us. Limelight, by the way, is a sweet old Charlie Chaplin movie. Yet another celebrity who would have loved our awesome recipes. So, here's what you need to make your own cilantro lime chicken couscous. Listen to how fancy that sounds and imagine yourself introducing it at a dinner party. Just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?

Ingredients:

Mmm, look at those veggies crispin'!

• 1 lb of boneless skinless chicken breast
• 1 pk couscous
• 1 medium onion
• 1 medium red pepper
• 1 smallish jalapeno pepper
• 1 large handful of green beans
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 avocado
• 6 tablespoons of soy sauce
• 6 tablespoons of sugar
• 3 tablespoons of olive oil
• red pepper flakes
• 1 whole lime
• 1 tablespoon of fresh cilantro
• salt and pepper
• sazon goya

Directions:

This recipe took us about an hour, and this is the third time we've done it. It seems to get a little shorter every time as you get better at judging when everything is going to be done. It's kind of a tricky recipe like that, but you can handle it. Start by washing everything that needs to get washed and then chop up the green beans into 1 to 1.5 inch bits. Toss them on the burner with some olive oil at about medium heat and then turn your attention to the other veggies. I should mention that these are just the vegetables that we used, and you can totally use all of your favorites too. Next time we do this I think I'm going to try out some spinach and tomato but that's just me.

If you're following our recipe to the letter, cut up the jalapeno, the red pepper, and the onion next, in that order, and throw them on the grill as you get them cut up. No need to rush, the green beans should be getting crispy before too much else gets in the pan, otherwise they'll end up closer to soggy. The garlic should definitely go in last, you don't want the garlic to burn. If you're doing tomatoes or leafy greens, they should go on with the garlic too.

As all of that is cooking, you should try and find time to make the chicken glaze. I was shocked at how much easier and quicker this was than making a chicken marinade. Put the soy sauce, the sugar, 1 tablespoon of olive oil, the red pepper flakes, and the sazon goya in a little bowl together. To get the lime zest, (the green part of the skin) use the little part of a cheese grater. Once you have the zest, use a fork to get all of the lime juice and stir the juice and the zest in with the rest. Oh look, that rhymed.  All done, chicken glaze basically made.

So, now that your glaze is ready, put it into a smallish frying pan and bring it to a boil. Stir it a lot so that the sugar doesn't burn and let it boil for a few minutes until it starts to reduce. Meanwhile, you should be cooking the chicken (which you have already cubed, sorry!) until it's not pink on the outside anymore. Throw the chicken in with the boiling glaze and let it cook into the meat. Stir the chicken enough to get the glaze all over everything.When you're done, you can just turn off the burner and let the chicken sit in the glaze for a while, can't hurt.

Finally, make the couscous and chop up the cilantro. Couscous boxes always have different directions, so I'll let you follow yours. The recipe that we followed the second time we made this suggested that we use chicken stock instead of water, and we had none, so we used chicken bullion. This was a terrible idea, and it came out extremely salty. Just use water if you're in doubt, it tastes great and you can always add butter if you think it needs a little extra kick.

Mix the veggies, the chicken, the cilantro, and the cut-up avocado if you decided to go with it (good call!) into the couscous. Put it in a bowl and you're done, bon appetite! Are your dinner guests impressed yet? I told you it was pretty cool as far as boneless chicken breast recipes go. Next up: fried cheese-filled meatballs. By the way, if you're liking our recipes, leave us a comment to let us know how it went for you. Got a question? We'll answer!

'Chicken couscous? All we have is shoes!'