Skillet Chicken Fajitas
Chicken and peppers charred hard in one pan, spiced with a rub you mix yourself, and piled into warm tortillas.
Nutrition Info (per serving)
- 620
- Calories
- 44g
- Protein
- 24g
- Fat
- 54g
- Carbs
Ingredients
- 700 g boneless chicken thighs
- 3 bell peppers
- 1 large onion
- 3 tbsp neutral oil
- 2 tsp ground cumin
- 2 tsp smoked paprika
- 1 tsp dried oregano
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1/2 tsp cayenne
- 2 limes
- 8 flour tortillas
- Soured cream, avocado and coriander, to serve
- Salt and black pepper
Instructions
- 1Mix the cumin, smoked paprika, oregano, garlic powder, cayenne, 1.5 tsp salt and plenty of black pepper in a small bowl.
- 2Slice the chicken thighs into finger-width strips. Toss them with half the spice mix, 1 tbsp of the oil and the juice of half a lime, and leave for 10 minutes.
- 3Cut the peppers and onion into thick strips, about 1 cm wide. Thin strips collapse before they char.
- 4Heat 1 tbsp oil in a large heavy skillet over the highest heat you have until it is genuinely smoking.
- 5Add the chicken in a single layer and leave it undisturbed for 3 minutes so it takes on colour, then turn and cook for 2 minutes more. Tip it onto a plate.
- 6Add the last 1 tbsp oil to the same pan, then the peppers and onion. Spread them out and leave them alone for 3 minutes to blacken in spots, then toss and cook for 3 minutes more. They should be charred at the edges but still have bite.
- 7Sprinkle over the remaining spice mix and cook for 1 minute, stirring, so the spices toast in the pan rather than sitting raw on the vegetables.
- 8Return the chicken and any juices, squeeze over the juice of the remaining lime and a half, and toss for 30 seconds.
- 9Warm the tortillas in a dry pan for 20 seconds a side and serve everything at the table with soured cream, avocado and coriander.
Fajitas are Tex-Mex rather than Mexican, and they live or die on char. The ingredient list is short and forgiving; the heat is not.
Get the pan properly hot
Char comes from direct contact with metal well above the boiling point of water. A pan that is merely hot will cook the chicken and peppers gently in their own moisture, and you end up with something pale and stewed that tastes fine but is not fajitas.
Heat the skillet until the oil shimmers and begins to smoke. Cast iron holds temperature best; a thin non-stick pan will drop below the useful range the moment food hits it.
Cook in batches if the pan is crowded. Everything you add lowers the temperature.
Leave it alone
The instinct to stir constantly is the enemy here. Contact time is what produces browning, and every stir moves food away from the hot surface before the reaction has finished.
Three minutes undisturbed, then turn. That is the whole method.
Thighs over breast
Chicken thigh has more fat and more connective tissue, which means it stays juicy at the high heat this needs. Breast meat goes from done to dry in about ninety seconds under the same conditions.
If you only have breast, slice it thinner and cut the cooking time roughly in half.
Mix your own spice blend
Shop-bought fajita seasoning is mostly salt, cornflour and anti-caking agent, with the spices well down the list. Five spices from your own cupboard cost less, taste considerably stronger, and let you control the salt.
Adding half of it at the end, into the hot pan, is deliberate — spices bloom in oil and heat, and thirty seconds of toasting changes them noticeably. Spices that only ever sit on raw meat in a marinade taste dusty by comparison.
Lime twice
Once in the marinade, where the acid works on the surface of the meat, and once at the end off the heat, where it stays bright. Acid added only at the start cooks away and the finished dish tastes flat.
Nutrition
Around 620 calories a serving including two tortillas. Bell peppers are an unusually good source of vitamin C — more per gram than an orange — and cooking them briefly at high heat preserves more of it than a long simmer would.
For a lighter version, use lettuce leaves instead of tortillas, or serve the skillet over rice and skip the soured cream.
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