Quick Broiled Chicken Breast with Honey-Mustard Sauce - Healthy Food Tip and Recipe

Today's Recipe

If you don't know what to serve for dinner tonight ...

Enhance the flavor of chicken with this special honey-mustard sauce and serve with spinach for a great tasting addition to your Healthiest Way of Eating. Enjoy!

Quick Broiled Chicken Breast with Honey-Mustard Sauce

Prep and Cook Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

• 4 boneless chicken breasts with skin
• 2+1 TBS fresh lemon juice
• 1 1/2 cups chicken broth
• 2 1/2 TBS honey
• 2 TBS Dijon mustard
• 1/4 cup sliced dried apricots
• 2 TBS coarsely chopped walnuts
• 1 TBS chopped parsley
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Quick Broiled Chicken

1. Preheat the broiler on high and place an all stainless steel skillet (be sure the handle is also stainless steel) or cast iron pan about 6 inches from the heat for about 10 minutes to get it very hot.
2. While the pan is heating, rinse and pat the chicken dry and season with 2 TBS lemon juice, salt, and pepper.
3. Leaving the skin on, place the breast skin side up on the hot pan. It is not necessary to turn the breast because it is cooking on both sides at once. Depending on the size, it should be cooked in about 7 minutes. Begin preparing the sauce while the chicken is cooking.
4. The breast is done when it is moist, yet its liquid runs clear when pierced. The inside temperature needs to reach 165°F (74°C). Remove the skin before serving; it is left on to keep it moist while broiling.

Honey-Mustard Sauce

1. For honey-mustard sauce, combine broth, 1TBS lemon juice, honey, and mustard in a small saucepan. Whisk together and bring to a boil on high heat. Once it comes to a boil, simmer for about 20 minutes. You want it to be reduced to a little less than half the volume you start with. This will thicken and intensify the flavor.
2. Add apricots and cook on high for another 5 minutes. When sauce is done, add chopped walnuts, parsley, salt ,and pepper. Serve over cooked spinach or other cooked greens.

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In-Depth Nutritional Profile for Quick Broiled Chicken Breast with Honey-Mustard Sauce

Healthy Food Tip

Can the way different nutrients react with each other be problematic for your health?

If you are asking this question very broadly—not necessarily in the context of food—the answer is definitely "yes." Nutrients can undergo what are called "antagonisms" with each other. Nutrient antagonisms are interactions that prevent each nutrient from being fully active in our metabolism. (The opposite of nutrient antagonisms are called "synergisms." Sometimes nutrients cannot be fully active unless they are present in combination.) There are literally hundreds of nutrient antagonisms—so much so that very large research volumes (like Bodwell and Erdman's Nutrient Interactions, Marcel Dekker, New York, 1988) have been written on this topic.
However, if you were asking specifically about food and food nutrients, I would not ordinarily worry about the interactions based upon levels of nutrients that are present in natural, whole foods.
All whole, natural foods contain many different nutrients, and there will be natural antagonisms and synergisms among nutrients found within every whole food. There may be situations in which you want to avoid some foods specifically because of the nutrient antagonisms involved. For example, if you were very deficient in copper, but very well nourished in zinc, you might not want to regularly consume zinc-rich foods because zinc and copper are minerals that can interfere with each other metabolically. However, this type of situation would be unique to a particular individual at a particular time for reasons of personal health history, lifestyle, and genetic predisposition. A balanced Healthiest Way of Eating focused on whole, natural foods could not create this type of imbalance. One of the reasons I like whole, natural foods is that nature has taken care of the nutrient interactions for us. Nutrients are supposed to interact with each other while we are digesting food and also after we have absorbed it. In fact, the nutrients found in food were interacting with each other long before the food was ever harvested. Provided that a food is whole, natural, organically grown, and carefully handled post-harvest and during the preparation of a meal in our kitchen, we trust the naturally occurring nutrient interactions to work in support of our health.