These 5-Ingredient Chicken Recipes Will Save Your Food Stash

What makes a chicken recipe easy? Is it the way it's prepared and cooked or is it the number of ingredients? We believe it has to be a combination of both because sometimes, even the most simple of recipes can require a complicated step or two that can make it harder to make, especially for a new or inexperienced cook.  

That's what these easy chicken recipes offer. These dishes need just a few more ingredients apart from the basic ingredients that you need to cook chicken and make it delicious: salt, pepper, oil, and water. While you can make a chicken dish purely from these ingredients alone, we think a few more ingredients, as many as five other ingredients, can make your chicken meal a much better tasting one. 

Do you need to know what the other ingredients used in these recipes are? Here's a quick list! Just note that even these additional ingredients are fairly basic as well since these are commonly found in most dishes. Take a look to see what else you'll need to create one of the recipes listed: 

• • soy sauce 
• • vinegar 
• • ginger 
• • garlic
• • onions
• • bay or laurel leaf
• • chicken broth (bouillon or granules) 
• • cornflakes
• • flour 
• • lemon
• • green beans
• • potatoes
• • cashews 
• • breadcrumbs 
• • eggs 
• • sesame oil 
• • lemongrass
• • lemon-lime soda 
• • oyster sauce

Once you have determined that you have the ingredients, here are easy chicken recipes you can make: 

Photo by Miguel Nacianceno

1 Cashew-Coated Chicken Nuggets Recipe 

You need cashews for this recipe but you can use other nuts to give your normal chicken nuggets a sweet nuttiness that cashews have. This recipe mixes both the finely chopped nuts with breadcrumbs to create that crispy, crunchy coating. Plus, this only requires 4 other ingredients and freezes really well once breaded.  

No nuts? You can use crushed cornflakes to coat the chicken if that's what you have. 

Photo by Dairy Darilag

2 Skillet Lemon Chicken Recipe

One of the best reasons to get a cast iron pan is its versatility and the way it can go from the stove to the oven and onto the table without needing to be removed from the pan. It's a rustic way of cooking but it's undoubtedly still one of the best cooking pans you will ever invest in. 

One great way to cook with it is using this method: you cook and fry your ingredients in the pan on the stovetop and if desired, keep it warm in the oven until you are ready to serve it with the rest of your dishes for the meal. This recipe only needs lemon, green beans, potatoes, and some chicken broth. It calls for a little white wine if you have it but even if you don't, you can totally skip the wine and this will still be filling and delicious.

Photo by Daks Angeles

3 Crispy Fried Chicken Adobo Recipe 

Do you have a packet of adobo marinade? If you do, then you just made this super flavorful fried chicken even easier to make! This recipe is all about the flavor and when you mix chicken with an adobo marinade that includes soy sauce and vinegar, you not only tenderize the meat before you even cook it, you also supercharge it with intense flavor. The result is a fried chicken recipe that is easier to make, but also everything you ever wanted your chicken adobo to be that it wasn't: soft and tender on the inside with a crispy skin on the outside.       

Photo by Aldwin Aspillera

4 Rice Cooker Hainanese Chicken Recipe 

The Hainanese chicken recipe is a long process of cooking the chicken in such a way that yields super tender and flavorful chicken. This is actually served with steamed rice that is doused in the flavorful drippings of the chicken as both the chicken and rice cooks almost simultaneously. That's where your handy rice cooker comes in.

This underrated kitchen appliance can do more than just cook rice but in this instance, we want it to cook the most perfect it can make. The big difference is that the flavorful chicken is also right there cooking with it, releasing its flavor to the rice to create an incredibly flavorful chicken meal that's unlike any other. 

Photo by Miguel Nacianceno

5 Ginger-Soy Roast Chicken Recipe   

How do you like your chicken? If you love your chicken with more flavor and kick than usual, this is one easy recipe that might encourage you to think beyond the usual soy sauce and vinegar flavor combination. This roast chicken recipe is flavored with ginger and soy sauce but it also has notes of sweetness from the brown sugar and a little more heat and flavor from the garlic. It's simply marinated and then roasted in the oven before being served with some steamed rice and asparagus spears. 

       

Photo by Majoy Siason

6 Lemon-Lime Soda Chicken Recipe  

Softdrinks are another highly underrated ingredient that you can very much take advantage of. This is an important ingredient in the Pinoy pork barbecue so it's no wonder that it can create a fantastic tasting chicken dish, too! This recipe uses that same lemon-lime soda and creates a sauce for this chicken recipe that is unique, yet undeniably addicting. 

If you had these ingredients, you too can make a delicious but easy chicken recipe. These recipes are further proof that ingredients can make the difference in what you make but only you can make it delicious if you know how to use your ingredients to the best of their abilities. 

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