Chicken and Vegetable Traybake
Chicken and Vegetable Traybake
A comforting and customisable meal perfect for busy university days. This meal is inspired by my mum as traybakes are a favourite back home. The beauty with traybakes is that you can easily swap out proteins, veggies and seasonings to use up what you already have in your fridge or cupboard and customise your own combination of deliciousness.
Taste: Simplicity: Cost:
Ingredients
- 650g chicken (can be breast, thigh or drum meat)
- 1 pepper (any colour)
- 1 courgette
- 1 red onion
- A handful of fresh cherry tomatoes
- Vegetable or olive oil
- Cumin powder
- Chilli Powder
- Tumeric powder
- Garam masala powder
- Garlic powder
- Salt and black pepper
- Tomato puree
- Optional: fresh lemon
Method
- Preheat your oven to 180 degrees.
- Rinse your vegetables (courgette, pepper and tomatoes) and allow them to dry. Slice the courgette, red onion, pepper and tomatoes into smaller pieces. The vegetable pieces will naturally reduce in size in the oven so do not dice them. If you’re using a lemon in this recipe, slice the lemon on the same chopping board: if you have a juicer, squeeze ½ the lemon to retrieve its juice.
- On a separate chopping board, cut the chicken into pieces and remove any bones if you want your meat boneless. Smaller pieces of meat will cook faster. If you’ve chosen to use chicken breast, I recommend cutting the meat against the grain (making vertical slices in the breast as opposed to horizontal slices), which makes the meat more tender and juicy.
- Add the vegetables and chicken to the oven dish. Add a tablespoon of vegetable or olive oil as well as ½ or a full tablespoon of cumin, chilli powder, turmeric powder, garam masala powder and garlic powder. Add a tablespoon of tomato puree to the mix and the lemon juice. Mix the chicken and vegetables with the spices until each piece of raw chicken has a spice coating.
- Place the oven dish into the oven for around 30 minutes. Be careful not to dry out the chicken meat.
- Your traybake it ready! You could serve it with rice (see Cooking Basics - Rice) or seasoned potatoes (see Cooking Basics - Seasoned Potatoes)
Recommended customisations
- To make this vegetarian, you could swap the chicken for halloumi cheese.
- To make this vegan, switch out the chicken for vegan sausages or chickpeas (be sure to prepare the chickpeas before adding them to the dish)
- Why not try a roast dinner-inspired traybake? Swap out the vegetables in this recipe for carrots, cauliflower, brown onion, parboiled potatoes and parsnips. You could also swap out the chicken for pork/vegetarian sausages. Season the traybake with honey, garlic, onion powder and mixed herbs.