4 Ingredient General Tso Chicken and Broccoli

I'm writing this specific blog post for my brother Jake.  By his own admission, he doesn't do much cooking at home and says he's not sure how to make easy meals.  Jake, this one is for you!  He also needs to eat gluten free most of the time due to allergies so here you go...a GLUTEN FREE meal with only FOUR INGREDIENTS!  Oh, it also comes together in less than 15 minutes.

My husband and I eat this meal a few times a month and it's a life saver on weeknights after we come home from busy work days and long commutes.  I definitely take some help from the store to make this come together super easily.  No shame in that!

Check out 3 of the 4 ingredients pictured below:

Some people snub this minute rice stuff but we love it.  So much easier and faster than trying to make a batch of rice on a Tuesday night.  Between the rice, the ready-to-go sauce and the pre-washed and pre-chopped broccoli, this is an easy lunch or dinner anyone can embrace.  Combine it with some boneless, skinless chicken breasts and you've got yourself a pretty healthy meal as well, with a good balance of protein, healthy carbs and veggies.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts, chopped into bite size pieces
• 1 bag of ready-to-use broccoli florets 
• PRO TIP: Feel free to use whatever veggie you like here.  Snap peas would be great with this too!
• 2 containers of the ready-to-use minute brown rice 
• PRO TIP: You can get the same stuff in microwavable bags that are usually 90 seconds cook time.  I stock up on these when they're on sale because they make dinners easy and work great for an office lunch too!
• 1 bottle of General Tso sauce 
• PRO TIP: You can use as much or as little sauce as you want in the recipe.  We like it "saucy" but can usually get two meals out of one bottle.

Pantry Items (not included in the 4 ingredients): Salt, pepper, olive oil

Optional Ingredient: Sesame seeds (I was fancy this night and had some black sesame seeds in the pantry that I garnished with.  Totally optional if you want to keep this at 4 ingredients.)

Instructions:

• In a large pan, drizzle a couple tablespoons of olive oil in the pan and heat to medium high. Drop the chicken into the pan, season with S&P and cook until lightly browned and cooked through, about 5 minutes depending on the size of your chicken pieces.
• Add as much sauce as you'd like and kick the heat back to low to let the sauce simmer and get all delicious with that chicken.
• While the sauce and chicken are getting to know each other, go ahead and pop that rice into the microwave per package instructions.  Should only take 60-90 seconds depending on what brand you buy.
• If you bought the broccoli in one of those ready-to-steam bags, pop that sucker into the microwave as well and cook according to package instructions.  You can also do a quick boil in some water on the stove top.
• Plate up the rice and top with the chicken and broccoli.
• Garnish with sesame seeds (optional).
• Enjoy!