Fajitas

yellow onion, sliced

green pepper, sliced

boneless, skinless chicken breast, sliced into strips

fajita seasoning (about 2-3 Tbsp per pound of meat)

Preheat oven to 375 Fahrenheit. Line a baking sheet with foil and coat with nonstick spray.

Arrange onion slices in a single layer on one side of the pan. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Toss chicken slices with fajita seasoning and arrange in a single layer on the other side of the pan.

Bake 15 minutes, remove, add bell pepper, and give it all a stir before spreading back out into a single layer, as much as possible. Bake another ten minutes.

Serve on flour tortillas with shredded cheese, sour cream, and guacamole.

Fajita seasoning recipe: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/232967/fajita-seasoning/

Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make fajitas! This is my cousin Molly’s recipe, which only requires a single sheet pan.

This recipe is so easy that it doesn’t seem possible the results are so good. Molly says she got sick of having to clean out the skillet every time she wanted fajitas, and worked out this method. Since she gave me the recipe I’ve made it multiple times, and I’m sure you could adapt it to use other types of meat.

You’ll need some fajita seasoning. I’ve linked to a recipe to mix your own seasoning in the show notes, but you can buy it prepared too. If you make your own, just put it in a clean screwtop bottle and it’ll last you quite a while. I used an empty spice bottle that I washed out and dried well. It’s so easy to put together that I decided to just link to the recipe. I mean, literally all you have to do is mix everything together with a fork and pour it into a bottle. The hardest part is pouring it without spilling it everywhere, which is why getting a little food-safe funnel is such a good idea.

Anyway, for this recipe you’ll only need a baking sheet. That’s it. Line the sheet with aluminum foil and coat it with nonstick spray. This is one time when I prefer the spray to greasing by hand, but if you don’t have any of the spray you can coat it with vegetable oil instead. Make sure to grease it all the way to the edges.

Turn the oven on to 375 if you haven’t already, then get your cutting board out. Slice up a yellow onion and a green pepper, and of course you can use other kinds of chili pepper too if you like. Slicing the vegetables into thin strips is traditional, but if you prefer to dice them you can do that too.

Then you need to slice the chicken into strips. This is easiest to do with a pair of kitchen shears if you don’t have a really sharp knife. If you’re using the pieces of breast meat often sold as tenders, you can just cut them into two or three strips. I haven’t tried this with thigh meat but it should work just fine too. Don’t slice your pieces too thin, though. I did that the first time and while they were still great, the meat was a little overcooked. Remember that the meat will lose moisture as it cooks and will shrink.

You can go ahead and arrange the onion slices on the pan, but only put them on half the pan. You need to keep the other half empty so you can add the chicken in a little bit. Arrange the onion in a single layer, not piled up, and shake a generous amount of salt and pepper over it. That’s black pepper, not hot pepper.

Next, you need to toss the chicken in the fajita seasoning to coat it. The easiest way to do this is in a small paper bag, like the kind they sell for sack lunches. You can use a plastic bag if you have to, but the chicken sticks to the sides. If you don’t have anything else you can put the chicken and the spice mix in a bowl with a lid and shake the bowl, but a paper sack is best because you can shake it vigorously. Drop the chicken in first, then spoon t