Chicken legs and thighs have been my favorite parts of the chicken. I’ve been taking the skin off for years to save on fat intake. Now, after the new diet I’ve been ordered on since my angioplasty, the legs are out completely as well and I’m left to find creative ways to make normally dry breast meat taste like something.
The only dish I’ve cooked in the past with chicken breast was a low-fat version of chicken Parmigiano in which I did not bread the chicken breasts and I used low-fat cheese. Now all cheese is out of my diet, so I’ve modified the dish again to simply chicken breasts baked in my own home-made tomato sauce.
Jarred tomato sauce is high in salt and sugar so avoid that like the plague if you’ve had blood pressure and heart problems.
Making my own sauce limits salt to what comes in the pre-packed cans of Italian tomatoes, a small amount given how much sauce is created from a can (I normally end up with a quart for every large Costco-size can of tomatoes I buy).
Making home-made sauce (my family called it gravy as do many Italian-Americans) must be done ahead of when you want to eat it because it takes hours to boil down to the proper consistency. It can be frozen for use in dishes like the chicken and defrosts easily in a microwave or a stove-top pot on low flame.
A skinless chicken breast is about 142 calories, according to Lose It! Plain tomato sauce is a negligible amount of calories.
John
The No Salt, No Fat, No Sugar Journal 