"It's super easy to make"—this doctor's healthy, high-protein peanut butter chicken recipe makes a perfect weeknight dinner

Short on time and ideas for dinner? This tasty peanut butter chicken recipe is an easy win. It’s healthy—with lots of colorful vegetables—high in protein, and best of all it takes minutes to throw together.

Dr Aileen Alexander is a women’s health and weight loss expert, TEDx speaker, medical doctor and former GP. She is also the founder of Nourish Academy , which helps women achieve a healthier lifestyle, reclaim their self-confidence and lose weight sustainably without rules or restriction. She shared this peanut butter chicken recipe and explained why she recommends it.

"I love this recipe because the kids will eat it—it’s a real family favorite," says Alexander. "It's super easy to make, and you can cook it and then have it in a couple of days' time for dinner—not everybody has time to make stuff fresh."

It's also a great choice if you’re looking to eat healthily, and if you're looking for high-protein meals that will help you build muscle, since both the chicken breast and peanut butter are high in protein.

"I also love it for the diversity of the different veggies," says Alexander. "People ask me which vitamins they need to have and I just keep it simple and tell them to try and get as many different colors on their plate as they can. Because different colors represent different vitamins and minerals, and this peanut butter chicken has got heaps of different colors."

There's no carbohydrate listed in this recipe, but that doesn't mean you shouldn’t include some in your meal. "I would always encourage people to have carbs for lunch and dinner. So ideally, a wholegrain source of complex carbs, like brown rice, for example, or sweet potatoes, or just whatever people fancy. When I support people nutritionally, I try to give them as much autonomy as possible. I just give them loads of examples of different carbs such as quinoa, couscous, rice or potatoes and let them choose."

High-protein peanut butter chicken recipe

Ingredients

• 500g chicken breast
• 10g coconut oil
• 1 red pepper
• 150g baby corn
• 150g sugar snap peas
• 1 chicken stock cube
• 40g smooth peanut butter
• 15ml soy sauce
• 200ml water

Method

1. Slice the chicken and peppers into thin strips. Coat the chicken with freshly ground black pepper.
2. Heat the pan, add the coconut oil and stir fry the chicken.
3. While the chicken is cooking, dissolve the stock cube in 200ml boiling water, add the soy sauce and peanut butter and mix thoroughly.
4. Just before the chicken is fully cooked, add the peppers, sugar snap peas and baby corn and stir-fry for five minutes.
5. Add the peanut butter mixture to the pan and bring to the boil for five minutes to thicken. Should the sauce thicken too much, simply add a little boiling water.