Chipotle Lime Drumsticks & Fajita Veggie Sheet Pan Meal

My chipotle lime chicken sheet pan meal prep is insanely quick to make. Cut and cook your peppers while you chicken is marinating, and the time flies by! Soon you’ll have four containers full of spicy tangy chicken and peppers you will be thinking all morning about! Seriously I have been looking forward to eating lunch every day this week, and if you’ve been here before, you know I tend to get bored halfway through the week.

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Week Three: Easy Sheet Pan Meal Prep

Welcome to week three, folks! Today I bring you an easy sheet pan meal prep! Honestly I am super proud of myself, I’ve gone three weeks in a row without ordering food to the office. And it feels GREAT! I know I’m like a few weeks late but is this my 2020 resolution? It feels like it. And you know I will be coming in hot with week number four! Make sure you follow my instagram, to see the recipe before it’s officially posted here.

I already knew what I was going to make this week, at least 6 days in advance (and that’s RARE.) I have been craving that wonderful lime and chipotle combination dancing on my tongue. My mom makes these awesome lemon, pepper, and dill chicken cutlets. Definitely going to have to get that recipe from her. She marinates the chicken in lemon juice for half an hour, which gave me the idea to do the same.

However, I marinated my chicken in lime juice instead. In all honestly I have a serious addiction to these spicy rolled tortilla chips called takis. They are BRIGHT red and have such a tangy lime flavor, I’m not kidding I’m obsessed with them. So obviously with the chipotle lime I took a lot of inspiration from two things I love: my mom, and takis.

Benefits of a Sheet Pan Meal

Obviously I love a sheet pan meal. Mostly because I hate cleaning up the dishes after I finish cooking. Hopefully as I get older I will learn that cleaning as I go would only be beneficial for everyone involved. I set this recipe up exactly like my mom’s sheet pan Sausage and Peppers. While the chicken is marinating, I sliced up the peppers and onion and got them into the oven.

I knew I wanted my peppers to be spicy and super soft. So I figured if I should get them in the oven first, like I do with the peppers in my mom Sausage and Peppers recipe. I mixed the peppers right on the pan, and cooked them for 10 minutes before taking my chicken out of the marinade. In total, my chicken actually marinated for about 45 – 55 minutes while I got the peppers and onion ready. The longer the better!

Benefits of Marinating Your Chicken

A good marinade seeps into your chicken prior to cooking. When the chicken is ready to eat, the lime flavor is a subtle acid this spicy chicken needs to add balance. The longer your chicken marinates, the more flavor will get inside. I’m thinking one day I’ll set this up to marinate for a couple hours instead and note the differences in a future post.

Not only is a marinate good for adding flavor, it helps keep your chicken from drying out in the oven. It keeps all those wonderful juices and flavors trapped inside the meat. Which is perfect for when you’re new to cooking, like I am. This is a good preventative measure to make sure you’re meal prep isn’t chewy and dry.

Seasoning Your Chicken

At the last minute, before putting my chicken in the oven, I decided it needed something else. Since the seasoning in my marinade didn’t stick to them, they looked to bare on the pan. So I quickly grabbed my chipotle seasoning again (seriously best $4.99 I’ve spent in a while.) I took an additional Tbsp of the seasoning and sprinkled it over the top, along with some salt of course.

Not only did it make for MUCH better pictures, it helped bring that spicy chipotle pepper flavor through so every bite has a kick to it. Not only that, but since I mixed the peppers on the pan the chicken was nestled in the wonderful fajita seasoning as well. When I was younger (like just a few years ago honestly,) I really disliked chicken. I found it to be bland and flavorless. But little did I know, all I needed to do was experiment a little bit more and find what I liked. Turns out chicken isn’t so bad! And from what I heard, the healthier alternative when it comes to eating meat.

Doesn’t Feel Like Enough?

I don’t know if anyone else has this problem at work, but I’m SO HUNGRY when it’s time to eat lunch. And since, I don’t have too much time to snack at my desk, my lunch has to be filling. So this week I served my peppers over some quinoa. Is that really surprising since last week’s post? But this time I used white quinoa.

It was definitely fluffier, and softer, with more of a brown rice texture, and flavor. It was the perfect addition to my meal. However, it wasn’t necessary. If you’re truly trying to keep this a simple sheet pan meal, just make extra peppers! I would definitely double, if not triple the peppers in you’re not making the quinoa. Perfect for anyone that is looking to cut down some carbs for the midday meal.

Or alternatively you could put two chicken legs in each container. I ended up having eight legs in my package. You could make all of them. But instead I decided to go with the quinoa, even though I did make 6 of the 8 legs. I mean, obviously I wanted to try one before packing them away, and so did my mom! Honestly we had to practice a lot of restraint not eating all the peppers. We each got to try one before I put everything in the fridge. And so far all week, it’s been my favorite part of the meal. I haven’t even thought once about ordering in!