Hey there, Lacey here with A Sweet Pea Chef.
And today, I've got a brand-new healthy and easy meal prep recipe for you.
We're gonna be making a delicious chicken parmesan with spiralized zucchini noodles
that is super-easy, super-delicious, and bonus, it's under 400 calories for the entire meal.
So let's get started.
One of the most frequently asked questions I get is what meal prep containers do I use.
I love these glass meal prep containers.
I got them a few months ago and I'm just absolutely in love with them.
I love how I can put them in the fridge and I can pre-portion my meals out, and I can
go straight from fridge to microwave.
The truth is, any airtight container will work.
If you can have ones that are the same size, that really helps with pre-portioning.
So whatever you want.
I'm gonna leave the link for the ones that I use in the description below.
So, okay, how amazing is chicken parmesan, right?
It's delicious.
It's savory.
It's a little bit of breaded chicken, and it has the tomato sauce and the cheese.
It's so delicious.
The problem is, when we order it out at the restaurant, it's typically covered in a batter
with all-purpose flour, and it's also just deep-fried and it's not really healthy.
So how about, instead, we change everything up and we use healthy ingredients?
I'm gonna show you the ways that we switch everything out as we go through this video.
So first, let's start preheating our oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit and then grabbing
a large mixing bowl.
In our mixing bowl, we're going to add some almond meal, chickpea flour, dried oregano,
dried basil, dried thyme, garlic powder, sea salts, and ground black pepper.
Then, we're just gonna stir all of this together until it's evenly mixed.
This is gonna be our batter, and it's full of nutrients and not all that refined junk
that we have when we order it at the restaurant.
Then, we're gonna grab some boneless skinless chicken breasts and we're going to dredge
that into our almond meal mixture.
We're gonna make sure everything gets evenly covered, and then you can just kind of shake
off any excess.
Then, repeat with the remaining chicken breasts.
In order to make my chicken breasts pre-portioned, so I know exactly what's in my meal, I look
for 4- to 5-ounce chicken breasts.
If it's not that size, I'll just cut it down, and then I will cook the pre-portioned size
for me.
If you want a larger meal, you can have more chicken breast in your meal.
It's really up to you, but a 4- to 5-ounce piece, this whole meal is gonna be under 400
calories.
Now, in a large ovenproof skillet, we're gonna add a little bit of olive oil and heat it
up over medium-high heat.
Add the coated chicken breasts to the hot oil, and we're gonna let them sit untouched
for about two to four minutes.
What we're wanting is for them to get nicely golden brown.
We're not looking to cook the chicken through right here, just to get a nice delicious-looking
crispy crust on the edge.
Once you have that, then flip it on over and do the exact same thing on the other side.
If you have to add a little bit more olive oil to help this out, that's totally fine.
Next, we're gonna pour our tomato sauce or our crushed tomatoes all over and around our
chicken breasts so that everything gets nicely coated.
Then, we're gonna sprinkle a little bit of grated parmesan over each one of our chicken
breasts.
Now, it's ready to go into the oven, so we're gonna just grab it, place it into the oven,
and we're gonna bake it for about 10 minutes.
What we're looking for is for the parmesan cheese to get melted and for the sauce to
heat up and for the chicken to cook all the way through.
Then, just remove your chicken parmesan from the oven and allow it to cool, and now we
can get started on our spiralized zucchini noodles.
Zucchini noodles make a really great low-carb, high-fiber, and really delicious replacement
for regular pasta for our meal prep meals.
So I use a spiralizer to make spiralized zucchini noodles.
So I'm going to grab my zucchini and we're gonna put that onto the prongs of the spiralizer,
and then we're just gonna spin away until we have delicious spiralized zucchini noodles.
Typically, one medium to large zucchini will go for one meal, so if you have four servings,
you'd wanna have four medium to large zucchinis.
By the way, if you don't have a spiralizer, that's okay.
You can buy spiralized zucchini noodles at the store already.
It's a little bit more expensive, so I would recommend going and getting yourself a spiralizer,
which are very cheap.
I'll leave the link for the one I have in the video today, and it's really great because
you can make all these different pasta alternatives.
Now that we have all of our zucchini spiralized, we're gonna heat some olive oil over medium-high
heat in a large skillet.
Then, we're gonna add in our zucchini noodles, and then toss that around.
Then, add the sea salts, ground black pepper, and garlic powder, and then toss to combine.
We're not looking to cook the zucchini noodles all the way through here.
Really, all we wanna do is just get everything mixed together and heated up.
Just cook it for one, two minutes at the most.
We just want everything to get coated and ready to place into our meal prep containers.
If you cook it too much here it will be mush when we reheat it later, so just very, very
minimal cooking.
Okay, are you ready to assemble our meal prep containers?
This is the best part because this is how you see all of your work come to fruition.
So on one side of our container, we're gonna layer in our cooled zucchini noodles.
Remember to kinda portion it out so that one zucchini is about one serving.
And then I like to add a little bit of that extra tomato sauce from the pan on the bottom
of our meal prep containers so that I can kinda mix it around when everything gets cooked.
And then over that, I like to add our chicken parmesan on top of all that and get it all
nice and nestled and tasty-looking.
Of course, you can always top with a little bit extra freshly grated parmesan and then
a leaf or two of fresh basil, which makes it nice and tasty.
This entire meal takes less than an hour to make for four servings.
Each meal is under 400 calories.
It's delicious, it's filling, it's savory.
It's chicken parmesan with zucchini noodles.
It's so good.
I hope you love it too.
Let me know in the comments below what your favorite chicken meal is so maybe we can turn
it into a new meal prep recipe for one of our new videos.
And make sure to give me a thumbs-up if you liked this video, if you love chicken parmesan,
and you can't wait to make it.
Thanks so much for watching and make sure to subscribe so you never miss our new weekly
recipe videos.
Thanks so much.
I'll see you next time.
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