Chicken and Smoked Sausage Skillet

Every mom loves an easy skillet recipe. What’s not to love? Most of the time, these recipes are simple to prepare and require only one pan – yep my kind of meal. However, I have found it is only simple to prepare when the ingredients are prepped and ready ahead of time.

This chicken and smoked sausage skillet recipe, while a family favorite, lost its place in the menu plan rotation for a while. Mostly, because to make it requires cutting up lots of meat – which I do not like doing. The last thing I want to do after work is cut up raw chicken.

My solution to this was to put together a chicken and smoked sausage freezer kit. The freezer kit contains all the major components of the recipe: bag of cut up chicken, bag of sliced sausage, and a bag of rice. I put this together during one of my freezer cooking sessions a few weeks ago. Next time I will add to the kit the vegetables because that would have been helpful as well. I took the kit out yesterday morning and let it thaw in the fridge for about 36 hours or so. Then tonight when I made it all I had to do was put the recipe together – only messing up one pan in the process.

Chicken and Smoked Sausage Skillet Freezer Kit

There are other ways to freeze this meal that I go over below. Creating a freezer cooking kit is a great way to utilize freezer cooking but still prepare the meal fresh when you are ready to eat.

Chicken and Smoked Sausage Skillet

Chicken and Smoked Sausage Skillet

Servings: 8

Servings size: 1 ½ cups

Calories: 363 * Carbs: 24 * Fat: 20 * Protein: 22 * Fiber: 4 * Points +: 9 * Old Points: 8

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil

4 chicken breasts, cut into 1 inch chunks

1 16 ounce package Hillshire Farm Hardwood Smoked Chicken Sausage, cut into ¼ inch slices

1 medium green pepper, chopped

1 medium onion, chopped

2 14.5 ounce cans stewed tomatoes (flavored with celery, onions, and peppers)

2 cups cooked brown rice

Salt and pepper to taste

Hot sauce (optional)

Directions:

1. In a large sauce pan sauté chicken breast, over medium high heat, in the olive oil until cooked through, about 8 – 10 minutes.

2. Add Hillshire Farm chicken sausage and cook for another 5 – 7 minutes.

3. Stir in stewed tomatoes, peppers, and onions. Bring to a boil and then let simmer for 15 – 20 minutes.

4. Add in brown rice and stir until it is fully incorporated into the sauce. Cook for another 2 – 3 minutes or until heated through.

5. Season with a little salt and pepper to taste. Add hot sauce, if desired. I let everyone add their own hot sauce because we all like different levels of spice.

Freezer Cooking Instructions

Besides the freezer kit, you can freezer cook this recipe a couple different ways. You can prepare completely, portion out, and freeze into individual freezer meals. Warm up in microwave or on stove. Or you can prepare and freeze the sauce separately from the rice. When ready to make heat sauce up on the stove and add the rice after it is warmed up, heating thoroughly. This is a very freezer friendly recipe so anyway you choose to freeze should work out fine.

**Disclosure: Amazon links are my affiliate links. Hillshire Farm did not provide me with the sausage. I purchased with my own money and decided to share with SMK readers my experiences and recommendations.