As a fitness enthusiast, chicken is probably a standard food item on your dinner table. And for good reason! It’s an inexpensive, versatile, easy-to-cook, low-fat, high-protein food choice that goes well with other foods.

What else can you ask for?

Well, chicken can get a little boring if eaten day in and day out. There’s only so much you can do with barbeque sauce! So we’ve gathered 10 tips and recipes to spice up chicken and make this mainstay a whole lot tastier.

Tip 1: Marinating
For a richer flavor, season and marinate your chicken for 24 hours before cooking and store it in the refrigerator. The longer you keep chicken in a marinade, the more it’ll be infused with flavor.

Tip 2: Healthy Marinating
To keep meals healthier, marinate chicken in seasoned fruit juice or chicken broth instead of oil-based marinades before grilling or broiling. Always store chicken in the fridge while it marinates, even if you only plan to let it soak for 30 minutes.

Tip 3: Seasoning
Use bold seasonings like freshly grated lemon peel, minced hot peppers, fresh herbs, and infused vinegars to add flavor to chicken dishes without adding fat.

Tip 4: Non-Stick Skillets
Sauteed chicken tastes great, but can be fattening if you use oil or butter. Instead, eliminate the need for oil and butter by using a non-stick skillet. Trim all visible fat from cuts of chicken and add some onions, green peppers, and spices.

Tip 5: Cooking Thermostat
Drying out chicken by overcooking it can ruin its taste. To get around this problem, use a cooking thermometer to determine when your chicken is cooked just right. The internal temperature of chicken breasts should be 170 degrees F. Another way to see if chicken is done is to pierce the thickest part of the meat to see if the juices run clear. If they’re clear and not pink, the chicken is ready.

Tip 6: Skin
When baking a whole chicken, it’s best to keep the skin on to avoid drying out the meat. The skin helps hold in the juices and flavor of the meat. It can be easily removed after cooking.

Tip 7: Brine
One of the best ways to cook a very juicy, tender, and flavorful chicken is to soak it in salt water, also known as brine, before cooking. To create good brine, dissolve a half-cup of salt and a half-cup of brown sugar in a gallon of water. Immerse the chicken completely in the solution and place it in the refrigerator right away. You may want to weight the chicken with a plate to keep it completely immersed. Let the chicken soak in the brine for 3 to 12 hours.

Before cooking the chicken, make sure to rinse off the excess brine with fresh water and dry completely with paper towels. Brine works by allowing moisture to pass through the meat more easily.

This process adds moisture to chicken, infuses the meat with more flavor, and shortens cooking time. It’s important to note that brined chicken will cook faster than chicken that has not been pre-treated, because water is a better conductor of heat than meat.

Tip 8: Salt-&-Sugar Rub
Another way to make tasty, tender chicken is to add it to a salt-and-sugar rub. For chicken breasts, blend 1/3 cup of course salt and 1/3 cup of brown sugar (do not use refined white sugar) with a mixture of your favorite seasonings. A tablespoon each of ground black pepper, paprika and chili powder are good seasonings to spice up this mix. In a large re-sealable plastic bag, rub the entire mixture evenly over the chicken, seal up bag, and refrigerate for 4 to 8 hours. You may find it easier to use several bags in this instance.

When ready to cook, rinse the chicken breasts thoroughly to remove the salt-and-sugar rub and dry the breasts with paper towels. The chicken is then ready for cooking.

Tip 9: Leftovers
Leftover chicken is great for lunches. It can be heated up or eaten cold. When reheating leftover chicken, cover the dish to retain moisture and flavor. You may want to consider brining your chicken if you know you’ll have a lot of leftovers. Brining chicken makes reheated leftovers much more tasty, tender, and juicy. One lunch idea is to roll up sliced chicken breast in whole wheat pita bread with fresh green peppers, onions, lettuce, pickles, mustard, and ground pepper. This makes for a delicious, high-protein, low-fat lunch meal. Try adding other fresh ingredients to make your own version.

Tip 10: Spice It Up!
Adding particular ingredients to a marinade, brine, rub, saute, or sauce can really enhance chicken’s flavor and give it an international flare. For Italian chicken recipes, use fresh minced garlic, dried oregano, dried basil, and dried thyme. For Indian-style chicken, you may want to try mixing coriander, turmeric, cardamom, and bay leaves into a marinate.
For Thai chicken, try adding some cilantro, lime juice, ginger, coconut milk, and lemongrass to the recipe. And for that Tex-Mex flavor, try adding cumin, sage, minced fresh chili peppers, or chili powder to chicken.

Bon appetit!

Ingredients:
8 oz chicken breast
Tabasco sauce (or other favorite hot sauce)
2 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tsp crushed, dried jalapeno peppers
2 pinch of salt
1 tbsp Cajun rub/spices
1 ½ cups of frozen green beans
5 oz red potatoes

Directions:
1. Combine the hot sauce, cayenne pepper, salt with chicken in a container and really roll the chicken breast around in the mix, then let it sit in the refrigerator for 3-10 hours (the longer, the juicier it will be)
2. This works best with a Foreman-style grill. Pre-heat, then slap the chicken on and cook for 7 ½ minutes
3. While the chicken is cooking, stab the red potatoes and cook in the microwave for 4 ½ minutes or until soft in the middle
4. Take the potatoes out, put the green beans in for 2 – 3 minutes
5. Smash the potatoes and sprinkle on a pinch of salt and the crushed jalapeno peppers.
6. Sprinkle the other pinch of salt on the green beans
7. Enjoy!

Nutrition Information:
Calories: 599
Protein: 77 g (52%)
Carbohydrate: 50 g (34% – whopping 10 grams of fiber!)
Fat: 9 g (14%)

It really is great for a change (especially for those of you who are hardgainers or are on a bulking cycle), but also nifty when you’re on the run – you can bag these and eat them on the road!

Ingredients:
2 scoops chocolate protein powder blend
1 whole egg
4 egg whites
½ cup oatmeal
1 tsp cinnamon
1 packet Splenda
¼ cup water

Directions:
1. Combine all ingredients in the blender. Add the eggs and water first, then the protein powder, followed by the oatmeal, cinnamon, and splenda.
2. Blend until smooth.
3. Cook like you would an ordinary pancake (makes 2 – 3 medium sized pancakes).
4. These cook fast so be careful not to burn them!

Nutrition Information:
Calories: 571
Protein: 62 g (43%)
Carbohydrate: 42 g (29%)
Fat: 18 g (28%)

Note: This recipe does not use syrup…. stay away from processed sugars y’all! The Splenda makes them sweet! You can also substitute the chocolate protein powder for vanilla or strawberry flavored powders as well… make this recipe your own!

What is it? Eating piles of holiday food!!!!

This article is not about how to minimize holiday weight gain. That topic has been addressed many times before and will no doubt be addressed many more times to come. What we’re talking about here is how to use your increased holiday eating to your advantage in your training.

It’s very easy to take the joy out of the holidays by restricting yourself too much when it comes to proper eating habits…

So we propose something different: Rather than forcing yourself to eat plain potatoes and dry turkey when your whole family is sitting down to a big holiday dinner, join in!!!!

Here are some steps that will help holiday eating habits benefit your muscle growth goals:

1. Forgive Yourself In Advance: Don’t feel guilty about anything!

2. Reduce Your Calories Before Your Big Meals: By reducing your caloric intake before the big meals, it’s much more likely that your body will use those excess calories to rebuild depleted stores rather than add to the ones that are already there. Don’t starve yourself or your body will panic and try to store everything it gets as fat – just reduce.

3. Do A Hard, Heavy Workout As Close To Mealtime As You Can: By doing your workout just before a big holiday dinner, all that food is going to go towards helping your body rebuild and recover from the workout. Very little, if any, of the excess calories you eat will be stored as fat under these conditions.

4. Try To Focus On Foods With Some Nutritional Value: Feel free to load your plate with turkey and mashed potatoes. These foods have a great deal of nutritional value.

5. Increase Your Training Volume: What this basically means is do more sets for each muscle group. You may have to decrease your rest periods or perhaps increase the number of training sessions you do in order to increase the volume but doing more sets (at least temporarily) will give your metabolism a kick-start.

6. Don’t Go To Sleep After You Eat: We know it’s going to be hard but you’re better off not napping after a big holiday meal. If you sleep, your body is more likely to store excess calories as fat, not muscle. It will also slow your metabolism down and you’ll digest your food a lot slower. Relax, but if you can help it, don’t sleep right away.

7. Schedule Another Heavy Workout For The Day After A Big Holiday Meal: After loading yourself up with carbs, fat and protein, your body is a nutrient-filled growth machine. Take advantage of your loading by doing another high-volume, heavy workout the day after.

8. Take All The Leftovers People Are Willing To Give You: Stick to the more nutritious foods when you do this, such as meat, potatoes and vegetables. It beats cooking big meals for yourself for the next three days.

9. If You Bring Home Desserts, Save Them For Post-Workout Meals: Most desserts are filled with sugar. After a workout, your body will suck up this sugar just like any other carb and not store it as fat. In fact, it will increase your insulin levels and help you store protein in your muscles!

Putting these tips to work won’t necessarily mean you won’t gain some fat over the holidays but they can certainly help to minimize fat gain and maximize your muscle mass gains. Putting your overeating to work for you may not be pretty but it can be very effective!