Chicken Avocado Melt with Black Bean & Corn Salsa
Chicken. It’s what’s for dinner more often than any other meat in the United States. Over the years, this has been true at our house as well. We’ve never been big fans of pork. (Well except for bacon, because duh, it’s bacon.) We’ve limited our red meat intake and eaten more seafood ever since moving back to the Pacific Northwest. But chicken remains a staple. It’s easy to defrost and lends itself to so many different recipes. These days I look for high-quality, pastured chicken with local being even better. I’ve also been seeing air-chilled chicken more often at my local grocer. I buy it on sale and then we divide it up and vacuum seal into dinner portions for easy defrosting. There are so many ways to cook chicken, yet I’m always looking for new ideas. Once or twice a year I pull the recipe for Chicken Avocado Melt out of my archives. It remains one of my husband’s favorite dinners. I recently served this topped with a black bean and corn salsa and a side of cilantro lime rice with candied cumin. ¡Fiesta!
Fiesta time: Chicken Avocado Melt on my Kate Spade Market Street “Confetti” plates.
From what I remember, “Chicken Avocado Melt” won a recipe contest sponsored by The Arizona Republic more than 20 years ago. The original recipe called for pounding the chicken breast (pretty sure this is why I invested in a kitchen mallet), breading it in a cornstarch mixture, browning and then topping with Monterey Jack cheese and avocado before popping in the oven. I used masa instead of corn starch, tweaked the seasonings, put the avocado slices on after baking and prettied it up with a colorful salsa. Here’s how I make this time-tested chicken dish:.
Chicken Avocado Melt aka Fiesta Chicken
Ingredients:
Avocado oil for browning
4 boneless chicken breasts
3 tablespoons masa flour
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 egg, slightly beaten
1 tablespoon water
1/3 cup cornmeal
1-2 firm ripe avocados, thinly sliced
Monterey Jack cheese, grated
Black bean & corn salsa (recipe below)
Optional: sour cream
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
If you’re using regular-sized chicken breasts, place between parchment paper and lightly pound the chicken to ½ to ¼ inch thickness. (I used thin-cut chicken breasts so no beating up on the chicken necessary.) You could also slice them horizontally if you’re good at that. Depending on the size of the chicken breasts, you may want to use 2 large ones and cut them in half.
In a shallow dish or pie plate, mix together the masa flour, cumin, garlic powder and salt.
Mix water and egg in shallow bowl.
Put cornmeal in bowl. (I tried this with ½ cornmeal and ½ bread crumbs, but I liked all cornmeal the best.) I’m thinking crushed up tortilla chips could work as well.
Dredge the chicken in the flour mixture first; then dip in egg mixture and coat with the cornmeal.
Heat oil in skillet on medium high. Cook chicken 2 minutes per side or until you get a nice light brown color. Place chicken in a baking pan, grate the cheese directly over the chicken to your liking. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.
While chicken is baking, slice the avocado. When chicken is done, top with avocado and Black Bean & Corn Salsa. If you like, add a dollop of Daisy.
Black Bean & Corn Salsa
½ can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 small can corn, drained
½ cup or handful of cilantro, chopped
¼ cup red onion, finely chopped
¼ cup green onion
½ cup tomatoes, chopped
½ jalapeño, finely chopped (adjust amount to taste or substitute green bell pepper)
3 Tbs. freshly squeezed lime juice
2 Tbs olive oil
1 Tbs. honey
1 ½ tsp cumin
½ tsp. kosher salt (add more to taste)
Rinse the beans and corn, pat dry and add to medium bowl. Dice the tomatoes and set aside to allow excess juice to drain before adding to salsa. Chop cilantro, onions and jalapeño and add to bowl. In a small cup or bowl whisk together the oil, lime juice, honey and cumin. Pour dressing over veggies and toss lightly with fork to combine. Add salt to taste.
Some notes:
You can make this in advance, but to keep the colors vibrant it’s better to make about an hour before and place in the fridge.
For the tomatoes, I used orange and red grape tomatoes … because I can’t resist buying those colorful little packs of baby tomatoes. Use whatever tomatoes you have on hand.
You don’t have to be exact on the amounts of veggies. I pretty much toss stuff in until the proportions give me the color I’m looking for. Same with the dressing, feel free to adjust. Make sure to salt.
This will make way more than you need for the chicken. Enjoy the rest on tortilla chips.
Cilantro Lime Rice with Candied Cumin
All this chicken really needs is some rice to go with it (and probably a glass of white wine or rosé). I prepared long grain white rice in the Instant Pot. Just remember to add 1 cup of water for every cup of rice — so a 1:1 ratio. When the rice is ready, add a handful of cilantro, squeeze in the lime juice and plenty of salt. No need to measure anything, just start with a little and adjust to your taste. Here are my measurement estimates:
Ingredients:
1 cup long grain rice
Handful of chopped cilantro
½ lime, squeezed
1 tsp. kosher salt
Candied Cumin (make ahead for topping rice or veggies)
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp brown sugar
1 tsp water
Put the cumin seeds in a small sauce pan and toast over medium heat. Move the seeds around constantly until toasted and fragrant, 1-2 minutes. Add the brown sugar and 1 tsp water to the pan with the cumin. It will bubble a bit. Remove from heat and continue to stir until its a caramel/candy-like texture. Let cool completely in pan. Once cool, scrape seeds into a mortar and pestle (or small bowl) and grind to crush most of the seeds.
The candied cumin is unexpected and makes the rice sing. I got the candied cumin idea from a cookbook called Salad for President, where they adorned a beautiful carrot salad (which I featured in an earlier post).
Please add this chicken and rice to your recipe archives! You won’t be sorry. Bring it out on a cloudy day when you need your food to sing or when you just want to create a fiesta mood.
Just for fun, I’ll share that in 2020, the most consumed type of meat in the United States was broiler chicken, at about 95.4 pounds per capita according to Statista.com. By my calculations, that’s 1.83 pounds per week and we just finished week eleven. So, if you’re average, you’ve already consumed approximately 20 pounds of this bird. Only 75 more to go! Why not make Chicken Avocado Melt one of those?