Free Meal Prep: Chicken Quarters, Beans, and Rice

Ingredients:

• 1 10lb bag of chicken quarters, usually yielding 8-12 chicken quarters of varying sizes

• approx. 1/4 to 1/2 cups of uncooked rice per portion. the total amount will vary quite a bit depending on how many quarters that your bag has and how many carbs you want per portion.

• (optional) a little bit of olive oil

• 1 small bag of black beans, the ones that usually cost a dollar and change at most

• 2 bushels of cilantro (or Italian parsley if you've got that one gene)

• 1 little container of lime juice that you can get in the produce department

• Lawry's or Fiesta Brand Lemmon Pepper to taste depending on how you're feeling.

• I added some ribs of celery here but that wasn't really planned, I just had leftover from another recipe.

Prep:

1. Drain bag of chicken quarters and count out how many are in the bag. Plan portions according to how many you've got and portion out rice/beans accordingly.

2. Break down your chicken: Cut the leg from the rest of the thigh with one cut through the joint, remove excess skin and fat from the tighs, and then de-bone thighs. De-bone thighs by first dislodging thigh bone from the bit of ribs on the thigh and then pulling out. You can sometimes do this with just your hands but most of the time you're going to need to put the tendons on the thigh bone. Once the thigh bone is away, make a cut along the edge of the ribs to remove rib bones and then remove and excess skin. Don't forget to save all the bones, meat, and skin for soup stock later.

3. Arrange legs and thighs onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. Optionally lightly drizzles oil over the top of the meat and then liberally season with Lawry's or Lemon Pepper mix. Cook in the over at 400F/205C for 30 minutes.

4. Cook rice and beans according to the bags' instructions. I used my rice cooker's recommended settings and did the "quick soak" for the beans.

5. Once rice is done cooking, fluff and transfer to a large mixing bowl. stir in lemon juice and wash and chopped cilantro.

6. portion rice and beans and then place cooked chicken on top. Allow to cool until no longer steaming before covering and transferring into the fridge. When portions are cold to the touch, transfer everything but what you intend to eat in the next 48 hours into the freezer. When you eat one portion, take another out of the freezer to thaw in the fridge.

(approximate) nutrition:

This one is a bit trickier to pin down as there's a lot of variation in yields, expecially for the chicken. These nutrition facts assume one average-sized Drumstick, 3oz of boneless, skinless thigh meat (it's actually very rare to get a whole 4oz of pure meat per thigh), and 1/4 cup of rice and beans uncooked each.

For reference here I'm going off what the USDA food database says her for the meat nutrition info and the label on the bag for anything that came with one. https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/ Seriously this website is an amazing resource for figuring out the approximate nutritional info of your own recipes.

Per portion:

• Calories: 610

• Fat: 16 Grams

• Saturated Fat: ~4 grams

• Cholesterol: 200mg

• Carbs: 69 grams

• Sugars: 1 gram

• Fiber: 18 grams (prepare to be a menace everywhere you go.

• Protein: 57 grams

• Sodium: 175mg (if you used Lawry's add about 400-500mg sodium per serving)

You know what's wild? The Lemon pepper seasoning has no sodium in it. that's amazing for people trying to watch their salt levels.

No for real. Also here's the nutrition breakdown.