Texas Two-Step Chicken

from Pace Picante Sauce bottle

This recipe is becoming a Weaver favorite. It's very easy, and tastes great. It can be found at the Pace website here, as well as lots of other places online.

Ingredients:

4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
1 1/2 cups Pace® Picante Sauce or Pace® Thick & Chunky Salsa
3 tbsp. packed light brown sugar
1 tbsp. Dijon-style mustard
3 cups hot cooked regular long-grain white rice

Directions:

• Place chicken in 2-qt. shallow baking dish.
  
• Mix picante sauce, sugar and mustard. Pour over chicken.
• Bake at 400°F. for 20 min. or until done. Serve with rice.

Hints from the kitchen:
A couple times, we have cooked the chicken and sauce on top of the rice like a casserole, which adds a nice spice and crunch to the rice. Most of the time, though, the rice isn't ready by then, so we just serve it at the end as suggested.

Tequila Lime Grilled Chicken

from Suzanne Forbush

We got this recipe from our friend Suzanne Forbush in our ward. Since we also stole the idea of having a recipe blog from them, we thought this would be a good first entry. We tried it a couple of nights ago, and it's yummy! (though a little strong for some).

Ingredients:

4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves (1 1/4 lbs)
2 tsp grated lime peel (it takes about 2 limes to get 2 tsp)
1/4 cup lime juice (the juice from 2 limes)
1/4 cup olive or vegetable oil
2 Tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 small jalapeno chili, seeded and finely chopped
1 clove garlic, finely chopped

Directions:

• Mix all ingredients (except chicken) in a shallow bowl or plastic bag to make the marinade.
• Flatten each chicken breast half to 1/4 inch thickness between sheets of plastic wrap or waxed paper.
  
• Add chicken to marinade; turn to coat with marinade.
  
• Cover dish or seal bag and refrigerate at least 30 minutes but no longer than 24 hours.
• Prep grill on medium heat. Remove chicken from marinade, cover and grill chicken 4 to 6 inches from medium heat 8 to 10 minutes, turning once, until juice of chicken is no longer pink when centers of thickest pieces are cut.

Serve with rice, noodles, or chips and salsa
Makes 4 servings

Hints from the kitchen:
For a milder taste, cut down on the lime zest and pepper, and substitute parsley for the cilantro. We actually used about twice the amount of zest and some parsley and serrano peppers from our garden!

To use the leftover marinade as a sauce, boil it for 1 minute to destroy any bacteria that may have been transferred to it from the chicken. It can also be poured on the chicken as it cooks, as long as that side is cooked again for a couple minutes.