Chicken Fajitas

This is a one of our favourite family meals.  It is also frugal because you can make one large chicken breast stretch to 2 or 3 people.  We always had it when we needed a quick meal. When the children were young, I would cook it the night before and then warm it up in the microwave when we got home and we would have a meal on the table in a few minutes. I don’t buy the kits as they work out expensive. Mr S makes the spice mix up from spices bought cheaply from the World Food aisle, and we keep it in a recycled jam jar in the cupboard. It makes lots of meals and we probably only need to make it 3 times a year. We also often make our own wraps which cost pennies and you can find the recipe for wraps here.  It is easy to buy ready made wraps from supermarkets but this will put the price of the meal up quite a bit.  The thing I like about fajitas the most is that you can make it as special as you want and put a mixture of guacamole, sour cream, grated cheese, salsa, spicy rice and lettuce leaves on the table for a special occasion, and serve it with wedges, or you can just put the chicken and vegetable mix in the wraps and eat them as they are.   If we are serving this for dinner, we will have 3 wraps each.  If we are serving it for lunch, we will have 2. When we are stretching it to feed 3 people, we will add more pepper and onions or add some spicy rice.

Recipe which serves 2 to 3 people

Spice Mix (made in advance and enough to make lots of batches)

Half a tablespoon of chilli powder

2 tablespoons of smoked paprika

Half a tablespoon of ground coriander

1 tablespoon of garlic powder

1 tablespoon of  dried oregano (I do it heaped)

Mix together well and store in a jar in a cool, dark place.

Ingredients

1 Large chicken breast cut into thin, little strips. (I cut it with scissors over the pan)

1 medium onion, sliced thinly

Half a yellow or orange pepper, sliced in thin strips

Half a red pepper

Spice mixture (I use 3 to 4 tsp but you can use as much or as little as you want,

Oil for cooking

4 to 6 wraps

Method

1. Put some oil in the pan and cook the chicken until no pink is showing.
2. Add the onions and the peppers and fry for a couple of minutes until the vegetables are soft. Add a splash of water if they needed cooking a bit longer.
3. Add spices to taste. I add 3 or 4 tea spoons to the pan. Stir whilst adding a few more splashes of water. The chicken and vegetables want to be coated with a thick sauce, but not be watery.
4. Fill the wraps and serve (alternatively put on the table with grated cheese and salad leaves and any thing else that you want to add and let people make their own fajitas).

At Christmas, one year, our oven broke down with turkey inside.  I ended up cooking some of the turkey in a frying pan and we had fajitas for Christmas dinner.   The children loved it. When we have been really broke and had little money we have made the fajitas without the chicken and added some pre cooked home grown beans to the pan for protein, and so this could also be turned into a vegetarian meal. or. We have also used cooked turkey left overs before or added some chorizo to some vegetables.