Cooking with Hillshire Farm #Grilledessentials

This summer has been an extremely busy one in my house. Between play dates, weddings, activities, swim lessons, birthday parties, I find myself constantly on the run. I love being busy, but I struggle with not having enough time to put together a good meal for my family. That’s why it’s so important to me to have healthy meals that are quick and easy to make.

So I was really excited when I had the opportunity to try Grilled Essentials, a brand new product by Hillshire Farm. Each package contains two chicken breast, can heat up in 60 seconds, have no preservatives and have only 120 calories per serving. There are four different flavors to choose from and I thought I’d share with you some of the recipes I made using my Grilled Essentials Hillshire Farm chicken.

The chicken flavors were delicious, when heated were not dry or rubbery tasting, and are really easy to heat. You can keep them in the plastic individual wrapping it comes in while you heat it in the microwave, then remove it and serve it hot. I seriously love how easy it is!!

Grilled Chicken Breast Recipe: With my grilled chicken I decided to whip up some yummy chicken salad sandwiches. I mixed some raisins, apple and lemon pepper with my chicken; toasted the bread and voila…. a delicious sandwich is born. My hubby loved it so much he requested for lunch several days in a row.

This is a great option because you could even heat up some BBQ sauce and throw it over the top and voila you’ve created a new flavor!

Lemon Pepper Grilled Chicken: After a busy day running errands and 5 o’clock swim lessons, I need a quick easy dinner for my family. I decided to try the Lemon Pepper #grilled essentials. I whipped up some friend rice, made a small fruit salad and in 60 seconds my chicken was done. The flavor was great and even my kids enjoyed eating it!! It’s always a bonus when your kids will eat everything you are eating. Since I have a 3 year old and a 21 month old, they won’t always eat everything we do.

I think this flavor would also be great over a salad or in a chicken burger.

Garlic & Herb Grilled Chicken:  I love garlic and herb flavored food in general so I was really excited to try this one. I decided to experiment with a lunch option and a dinner option. For lunch I made myself a hot grilled chicken sandwich with cheese and a Champagne Pair Vinaigrette dressing. It was so delicious!!! Of course you can’t have a sandwich without chips so I enjoyed some yummy cheddar and sour cream ruffles.

For dinner I made grilled chicken burgers and french fries. My hubby said he loved it and was surprised by how each of the flavors tasted good and weren’t dry or rubbery tasting from being pre-grilled and then heated in the microwave. I completely agreed and went on to brag about how quickly I was able to make dinner and it was still healthy.

Italian Style Chicken: For our Italian themed night I cooked a dinner that included our #grilledessential chicken breast, four cheese ravioli in marinara sauce, and a salad with garlic and butter croutons. For the kids I included peas and grapes with their chicken. I have to say this one was not my favorite flavor of the four. I wasn’t really big on the flavor, but the rest of my family really enjoyed it.

Maybe next time I’ll try heating it up and creating a sliced chicken salad. That would be a great lunch option.

Hillshire Farm new Grilled Essentials will be hitting the shelves in just a few short weeks and I don’t know about you but I’m really excited about adding them to my weekly menu plans. If you want to learn more about the different Grilled Essential flavors, check out their website and join in our Twitter party on August 30th from 9-10pm EST. You never know, you might win some cool stuff!! You can follow along using the hashtag #GrilledEssentials.

“This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias, but all my opinions are my own and I really needed some new quick, easy and yummy recipe ideas.”