Sauteed Caramelized Onions, Sun-Dried Tomato, Garlic & Baby Spinach over Grilled Chicken – $1.75

So, one of the many reasons I haven’t posted in a few weeks is because I’m trying to comfortably fit into a bridesmaid’s dress for my friend’s upcoming wedding in a few weeks. Fruit and fresh veggies have been most of my diet lately and you just don’t need a recipe for that… not to mention it’s the holidays and I’m friggin’ busy.

Anyhoo, I try to sometimes have a “lean and green” meal as much as possible. Some kind of lean meat with any kind of green veggie. This was my version, with a little flare.

Chop up a whole small onion or 1/2 large onion in thin strips. The thinner the better. And yes, one small onion for one serving. These will cook down like crazy. Add them to a heated, oiled nonstick saute pan with a pinch o’ salt on LOW heat. We want these to caramelize.

I was given these pre-grilled chicken breasts. Normally I’m not a big fan of these, as I don’t know what they’ve done to it, or what they’ve put in it… but I’m a huge fan of free food, so I got over it quickly.

Cook a chicken breast whatever method you like best. If you have no idea what to do, just saute or bake it. I threw mine in the toaster oven.

 

While your onions are caramelizing, get some garlic ready. I used 3 cloves for just me because I planned on cooking them a while. They’re not so pungent when you cook them a while.

Since these are going to cook a while, you don’t want to mince them because it’ll start to burn. Slice them like this:

About 20ish minutes after you started cooking the onions, add the garlic.

While that’s cooking, still on low, go ahead and thinly slice up some sun-dried tomatoes. These really aren’t very expensive and this package has lasted me months. You don’t need much for that awesome flavor.

Drop the tomatoes into the onion, garlic mixture.

Keep cooking on low heat for as long as you can until something in the mixture starts to get too brown. Ideally, from start to finish, the cook time should be at least 30-40 minutes or longer. You definitely can cook all of this within 5 minutes if you wanted, but if you’ve got the time, let those onions caramelize, get nice and sweet, and reduce in size.

Now add a teaspoon-ish of soy sauce. This will deglaze the pan and get up all the goodies from the bottom. Go ahead and take off the heat after you stir it for a minute.

Immediately add a big ol handful of fresh baby spinach. This will reduce like crazy, so don’t be shy. Remember, you don’t even really have to keep cooking this- the heat from the pan should be enough. Just stir a few times.

See? That’s pretty. It’s all ready to plate as soon as the spinach wilts. This isn’t meant to sit around for a while or the spinach will get weird.

So hopefully your chicken will have been cooked through. Go ahead and plate that up.

And simply put the spinach mixture on top! That’s it, very easy.

1 Chicken Breast – ~$.80 (That’s the approximate price I count on. Sometimes cheaper sometimes more. But mine was free, so…)

1 Small Onion – ~$.40 (I get them in bulk)

3 Sun dried tomato halves – $.30

Handful of spinach – ~$.25

1 Serving: ~$1.75