My Very Own Recipe: Lime Chicken & Rice

I'm finally doing it. Thanks to Molly Piper's call for low-fat recipes and my inability to find my already written recipe, I'm finally putting it right here for the world to see.

Backstory: Roger and I were working out a lot and trying to get healthy one winter. We were eating chicken and rice for dinner 3-4 nights a week at least and we were just plain tired of chicken with only salt and pepper. One day I made chicken fajitas and as I was making it, I thought, "hmm. I wonder if we could use the marinade for the fajitas to flavor the chicken bites we're eating all the time?" And thus it was born. Lime Chicken and Rice. Just ask Roger, it's one of his favorites! If I've given you this recipe before and the measurements are slightly different, it's because I never had a "recipe" for the chicken, I've always just dumped and poured and hoped for the best. The good thing is that you don't have to be very precise with this recipe. It comes out tasting good every time. (Well, except for the time I tried to sub lemon juice for lime juice because we didn't have any more lime juice... yeah, don't do that.)

Ingredients:

Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts (you can even use frozen ones w/o thawing them) The same amount as you would use to feed your family if you were grilling it.
Olive Oil- just enough to coat the bottom of the pan
Salt & Pepper- a dash of salt, couple grinds of pepper
Chili Powder- 1/2 to 1 tsp. (you want to cover the chicken and turn the lime juice orange, start with the 1/2 tsp the first time you make it, I think. I'll measure the next time and update this when I do.)
Lime Juice- 1/2 cup (you may need more depending on the amount of chicken you are using. It should come up about 1/2 way on the chicken, definitely don't cover the chicken entirely with it.)
Cilantro- cut up and sprinkled on top- optional.

Method:

Cut chicken into bite-sized pieces. Heat olive oil in a pan with a lid on medium high (I use a dutch oven, but a big skillet w/lid would work, too) Brown chicken in oil, add salt, pepper, chili powder, and lime juice, stir to coat evenly. Cover with lid and turn heat down a bit. (On my stove I brown on 8 or 9 and turn down to 7.) Let simmer in lime juice until it is evaporated, stirring occasionally. It usually takes 15-20 minutes. Turn heat off when lime juice is gone and let the heat of the burner brown the chicken a little bit again. (Be careful though because it burns easily at this point.)

Serve with Rice & topped with Cilantro.

Notes: You can increase the size of this recipe as much as you want. Just make sure you increase the spices and lime juice accordingly!

I start the rice in our rice cooker before I start cooking the chicken. It all finishes at about the same time.

Please let me know if you liked it or if you had problems with the recipe!r