A pasta salad made with farfalle bowtie pasta and cooked chicken, tossed with ranch dressing, bacon, grape tomatoes and baby spinach.

BLT Bowtie Chicken Pasta Salad

Good gracious the heat!

As I publish this here in July we've been under an extreme heat warning, not just the average heat warning, for days. I'm intensely thankful for air conditioning these days, and frankly the ability to pay for it cuz y'all... it ain't cheap for sure!

How's that heat going for the meal planning here lately?

A chicken salad made with cooked chicken, celery, green onion, cold processed refrigerated dill pickles (like Grillo's) and dressed with a quality mayonnaise.

Grillo's Dill Pickle Chicken Salad

I love a good chicken salad, and my standby is still the one I lean on the most. It's a good solid deli-style chicken salad and I love it.

Since entering this food blogging experience many, many years back though, I've tried a bunch of different ones, so when I saw Elizabeth Heiskell making this one on social, I got a little curious.

Now. Pickles are a thing I do love in my chicken salad, but I use relish or pickle cubes usually and most often I lean toward a sweet relish.

Skillet Angel Chicken - My Way

My variation of the viral Angel Chicken recipe, made with boneless, skinless chicken breasts, wrapped in seasoned bacon, and finished on the stovetop in a sauce made of chicken stock, cream soup, cream cheese, butter and dry Italian dressing mix.

Skillet Angel Chicken

I'm sure by now you've seen some version of this Angel Chicken recipe, because it's literally all over the internet. It's usually made in a slow cooker, but if you've been around here any length of time you know I'm not a huge user of that appliance in general.

Oh, I like it just fine, especially for those tougher cuts of meat that need a longer cook time. It's not my favorite mostly because it involves advanced planning which I'm not that great at doing! Still, readers here enjoy using a slow cooker, so I've shared a few recipes here and there.

Chicken breasts in the slow cooker though? Those are my least favorite protein to cook in one.

A quick skillet meal made with seasoned, boneless, skinless chicken thighs and frozen mixed vegetables, served over rice or noodles.

Skillet Chicken and Vegetables

I love a quick skillet meal!

Even though I run this recipe website, I'm still like many of you. In between recipe development and getting things in a form where y'all can recreate it in your own kitchen, I have some days where I'm just not super inspired about what I want to eat, or even whether or not I even feel like cooking!

Strips of chicken breast, tossed with fajita seasonings and combined with sauteed peppers and onions, served on warmed corn or flour tortillas.

Skillet Chicken Fajitas

I love when you're sitting in a Mexican restaurant and a server passes by with a sizzling cast iron fajita plate filled with veggies and meat. It leaves behind it such a fragrant trail doesn't it?

Apparently,  it's a bit addictive too, that aroma, because you will often see tray after tray after tray delivered after that first one passed through!

Even my veggie adverse hubby aka The Cajun, fell into that fragrant allure once, and ordered some, despite my warning that they were more vegetable than they were protein.

A quick skillet version of barbecue chicken made with boneless, skinless chicken breasts and shown here with my Green Bean Supreme Casserole and Fiesta Confetti Corn.

Skillet Barbecue Chicken

The inspiration for this began with the BBQ Glazed Chicken in Pioneer Woman's most recent cookbook Dinner's Ready (#ad).

As soon as I saw the picture, my mouth watered so I thought that I would try it with some boneless, skinless chicken breasts I had and my own rub.

I loved the way this turned out y'all!

A creamy chowder made with a light roux, bacon and the trinity of vegetables, in a chicken stock and milk base, with chicken, corn and potatoes.

Chicken and Corn Chowder

I've got another new soup to share with y'all for National Soup Month before we roll out of this crazy January. We warmed up a few days and are now heading back to a little bit of a chill down here along the Gulf Coast, but thankfully not nearly as crazy cold as it was recently!

Y'all. We came close to having snow here along the beaches in that round, but all we ended up with was some sleet. Snow always seems to just miss us.

Certainly it's the season for soups, stews, chili, gumbo and... chowders! Although a lot of us enjoy all of those year round, winter is a perfect time for a good soup and I love trying new ways to make it!

Boneless chicken thighs or mixed pieces cooked with simple seasonings, a mixed peppers blend and rice in the Instant Pot, makes for an easy meal. Just add a green vegetable or side salad!

Instant Pot Chicken and Rice

This is one of those quick, easy, tasty meals that you can make when you aren't highly motivated to cook.

Yes! Believe it or not, that happens to me too sometimes.

That's one thing that I love about the Instant Pot - or any other branded electronic pressure cooker for that matter. That one appliance can make a quick and easy job of making a meal, unlike its cousin the slow cooker, which I rarely use because of the advance planning, early start and length of time required.

A general-purpose marinade with a base of oil, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, Worcestershire sauce and mustard with additional seasonings, great on chicken, beef, pork, shrimp and even vegetables.

General-Purpose Grilling Marinade

It's still summer y'all! 

I'm plugging along with the heat advisories down here on the Gulf Coast, so no pumpkin or apple or fall-themed recipes here quite yet, much as I'm looking forward to it all after this hot, hot summer.

So... let's talk marinades!

The Chicken Box Restaurant Chicken Salad

A simple chicken salad made with shredded chicken, boiled egg and celery with a mix of flavorful seasonings.

The Chicken Box Chicken Salad

If you've hung around here any length of time, you already know I love chicken salad! It's a great meal any time of the year, but especially when the summer heat is on.

The one I make the most is what I call a classic deli-style chicken salad. It's a very basic chicken salad, absent all of the other goodies like grapes or cranberries or even avocado, or bacon and nuts and all the little extras we like to throw into our chicken salads these days.

Still, I'm not staunchly tied to one single chicken salad to be the one and only chicken salad, so I find myself constantly experimenting and trying new recipes, and, in fact, I've got quite a few different versions published already here at the website... and more to come!

A quick one-pot, skillet meal of chicken, seasoning veggies, diced tomatoes, yellow rice and cheese.

Cheesy Chicken And Yellow Rice Skillet

I don't buy a lot of rotisserie chickens.

Not that I don't love them, because I do, and not that they aren't convenient, because they sure are. It's just now that I'm finally seeing whole chickens showing up on sale again here lately, I always pick up a couple of them.

Sometimes I bake my own rotisserie style version in the oven, or I grill one or smoke cook it on the Traeger (#ad). Other times I use the Instant Pot (#ad), and I'm loving the way that the air fryer works for a whole chicken too.

Chicken drumsticks dredged in seasoned flour and a buttermilk and egg batter and prepared in an air fryer.

Air Fryer Fried Chicken Drumsticks

While I don't eat it every day, and I rarely cook it at home anymore because it can be a bit messy, I do LOVE fried chicken.

Absolutely love it.

The chicken is tender. The coating on the deep-fried skin is so deliciously crunchy and loaded with flavor, it may well be my most favorite part. With easy access to places like Popeye's, and our local fried chicken buffet Hartz, fried chicken is The Cajun's and my top comfort food. We probably eat it more often than we should! 

A skillet meal of seasoned, sautéed chicken breasts, in a tomato basil pasta sauce with bow tie pasta and finished with Italian cheese.

Chicken in Tomato Basil Sauce with Bow Tie Pasta

When I don't know what I want to eat, much less cook, pasta always comes to the rescue! With some pantry basics and some good seasoning, you can whip up a delicious meal in short time. This is one of those meals.

Boneless chicken breasts, soaked in a southwestern seasoned, brown sugar brine, tossed in fajita seasonings, grilled over indirect heat and served with a southwestern seasoned rice.

Grilled Fajita Chicken and Rice

This is a main dish take on those well loved chicken fajitas, putting that bold fajita flavor on those ever popular, full-sized boneless, skinless chicken breast and using the classic peppers and onions to flavor a side dish of rice. Just something with familiar flavors. but a little different!

As always, the full recipe with instructions are further down the page, past the step by step photographs. Scroll or swipe down to the bottom of this post to go straight to the recipe.

Chicken Florentine with Mushrooms

Chicken breasts, pan seared or grilled, atop a bed of pasta with mushrooms and spinach in a cheesy Mornay cream sauce.

Chicken Florentine

You've probably seen Chicken Florentine recipes before, though there sure seems to be a wide variation on how it's made. While chicken and spinach are typically involved, sometimes seafood or even eggs, in a version similar to eggs Benedict, are substituted.

Some serve the chicken in layers over a bed of spinach with a Mornay sauce poured over that, topped with cheese and baked. More often it's simply cooked in the skillet. Some add pasta or mashed potatoes and top it off with sliced, cooked chicken and spoon the sauce on top. Some include mushrooms and some are prepared with a tomato based sauce. Some are creamy, and some even shortcut the sauce with cream soup, typically cream of mushroom.

Boneless, skinless chicken breasts, pounded thin, dipped in an egg and hot sauce blend, dredged in a seasoned buttery Ritz cracker mix, pan-fried or baked, and topped with a buttery pan gravy before serving.

Ritzy Butter Cream Chicken

Here's one of those tasty things to do with boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Y'all know I'm not the biggest fan of those, but after a dip in some egg and hot sauce, a pass through a nicely seasoned blend of buttery crackers, and a quick pan fry or oven bake, these are some kinda good!

I love using regular saltines as a coating for chicken, instead of the typical flour or bread crumbs, but there's a world of texture difference between saltine crackers and those soft, delicious, buttery round crackers, most of us know as "Ritz" brand. Where saltines are crisp and jagged, Ritz crackers are tender - kind of like the difference in the texture of soft bread crumbs and dried.

Roadside-Style Grilled Chicken

Chicken, boneless, skinless thighs pictured here, marinated in a seasoned vinegar and oil mixture, then grilled. Saucing is completely optional!

Roadside Vinegar Grilled Chicken

Outside of private parties, special events and festivals, you generally won't find many food trucks around south Mississippi, and sadly, not in many other locations around the state either.

While I do recall back in my corporate career days, a truck that came around occasionally at lunchtime, it was really more like a traveling version of those breakroom vending machine lunches. You know the ones.

Cold sandwiches mostly, cheese snack packs and maybe some microwaveable meals. Nothing wrong with that! I've eaten a few of those sandwiches myself, for breakfast even, when I was in a rush to get out the door some mornings.

My take on the popular Crockpot Angel Chicken that's going around the internet, made with Italian dressing mix and cream cheese, except using pork chops, a homemade cream sauce, and cooked on the stovetop.

Creamy Angel Pork Chop Skillet

Although it's been around for years, I'm guessing that you've likely seen this recipe around the net a lot here lately using boneless, skinless chicken breasts and cream soups in the slow cooker. What is it they say? All things old become new again? Kinda like the rage here lately with the Instant Pot {affil link}. It's a basic, multi-function electronic pressure cooker pot that's actually been around awhile now, but for some reason, this one brand has picked up a big cult following here lately.

I'm not the biggest fan of boneless, skinless chicken breasts to begin with, and I prefer using my slow cooker more for longer braising types of things like bone-in thighs, whole chickens, beef roasts and even sauces, rather than things that I can whip up on top of the stove in 30 minutes or less. I also didn't have chicken breast, but I did have some assorted pork chops, so I went with those because it sounded good.

A quick skillet meal, made from andouille sausage, broccoli, leftover, cooked veggies, bow tie pasta, and a touch of sour cream added at the end for creaminess.

Creamy Andouille and Pasta Skillet

Don't you just love a good, quick skillet meal? This one I especially love because it's so versatile. In this instance, I just used some good andouille sausage, making it super easy because it's something that I always have on hand, and smoked sausage thaws pretty quick, making it an easy last minute meal. It's delicious with both chicken breast and shrimp also.

A super flavorful way to prepare fresh or frozen chicken breasts to use in chicken salads, soups, skillet meals, casseroles and other recipes.

Oven Poached Ready Chicken

Usually when folks need already cooked chicken for a recipe, they poach a couple of chicken breasts in a saucepan on the top of the stove. It's a quick and easy process when there isn't some already put up, or leftover from another meal.

Sometimes we pick up an over-sized deli rotisserie chicken, just for the purpose of a quick meal on a busy day, with some intentional leftovers. Very often, however, those are heavily seasoned and super-salty, making them less adaptable for some recipes.