This week’s recipes are a mix of meal prep (peep the homemade Chipotle – it’s like having a Chipotle bar at home for a week) and comforting soups because it’s that time of year here.
Leave a comment if you end up trying any of these recipes!
Here’s a roundup of recipes I’ve made recently! Enjoy!
1. Copycat Chipotle Burrito Bowls – Culinary Hill
10/10
Doing a true, full-out Chipotle copycat meal prep is a labor of love, but taking the time to make each ingredient from scratch – chicken, cilantro lime rice, fajita veggies, corn salsa, pico de Gallo and (of course!) guac – is SO worth it! This page from Culinary Hill has the copycat recipes for each component (minus I prefer Downshiftology’s cilantro lime rice) and it turns out tasting JUST like Chipotle, only way healthier. I compared macros and it was something like 20 fewer grams of fat than my usual Chipotle order. Crazy how restaurants sneakily pack it in. Bonus: guac at home isn’t extra!
2. Baked Crunchy Honey Buffalo Chicken – Half-Baked Harvest
8/10
This one comes together fairly quickly and works great with roasted veggies on the side! I’ve made this version too and might have liked it even better, though they’re basically the same recipe – just depends if you’re in the mood for buffalo or not. A food processor makes this come together faster but if you don’t have one, just crunch the cornflake mixture in a big plastic baggie with a rolling pin. I cut my chicken breasts in half to make thinner cutlets (or you could buy pre-cut chicken cutlets) and halved the recipe since I was just cooking for two. My husband loved this one – big buffalo fan! And I lowkey love cornflakes as cereal so have no complaints about buying them for this recipe and having a lot leftover.
3. High Protein Lasagna Soup – Madeline Moves
8/10
I’ve made different lasagna soups before but this one has a brilliant healthy twist of using cottage cheese in place of heavy cream, and you truly cannot tell the difference – I promise! High in protein and sneakily loaded with veggies – onion, spinach, red pepper. The only thing I might omit next time is the red pepper as I usually don’t put that in my lasagna. It wasn’t bad, just different. Will be making this again – leftovers heated up great and I felt good about eating it!
4. Italian sausage and kale soup
7/10
I make this soup at least once every winter (fun fact: the recipe is from my old work!). I’m probably shy with my rating on this because I love it so much, but don’t want to oversell it – it’s a simple soup with Italian sausage, tomatoes, kale, and pasta, plus I usually add white cannellini beans to bulk it up. Healthy winter comfort food in a bowl. I think the key is that I use spicy Italian sausage (Graziano’s if you’re local!). If you can’t find spicy Italian sausage, I’d recommend adding lots of red pepper flakes while cooking the sausage. Makes great leftovers – just add a splash of water before re-heating to help re-volumize broth that the pasta likely soaked up. Top with fresh basil and parmesan!
5. Raspberry Crumble Bars – Ambitious Kitchen
8/10
This is a recipe repeat for me! These raspberry crumble bars taste like a Nutri-grain bar (especially when you them into granola bar-sized pieces!) but without all the processed ingredients. After cutting, I like to put half in the freezer for later and the other half in the fridge for the week. Such a good snack or breakfast on the go!
And not featured…
I also had a big cooking fail this week. I wanted to go all out and make a special from-scratch gnocchi dinner for Jon and it was…a disaster. I severely underestimated how long it would take to make so dinner was ready hours later than planned, meaning I was hangry while making it, and poor Jon kept popping in to ask if it was ready yet (…no!). I somehow bought chorizo hot dogs instead of ground chorizo, ended up burning them – and shocker, burnt chorizo hot dog sauce just wasn’t it. There’s nothing worse than sitting down to a dinner that took hours and having it just…not be it. But live and learn! I’ll skip linking that recipe.
Favorite WINE GLASSES + dishes
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