I'm a Dietitian & This Is the One Ingredient I Never Leave Wegmans Without

I recommend it to all of my clients who are looking for fast, easy meals.

Reviewed by Dietitian Annie Nguyen, M.A., RD

If you live on the East Coast, especially the northeastern U.S., you may have the same love for Wegmans as my family and I do. I grew up in New Jersey, where there are plenty of ShopRites and Aldis, but we’d drive a few minutes out of our way just to go to Wegmans for our weekly grocery hauls.

Now I live in Rochester, New York—the birthplace of Wegmans. The grocery-store chain is truly a part of the culture here. There are close to a dozen locations within a 20-minute drive from me, which is a treat because Wegmans has lots of unique, delicious products that keep meals and snacks interesting without breaking the bank.

Related: I'm a Food Writer & These Are the 9 Groceries I Always Buy at Wegmans

And Wegmans turned out to be a saving grace for us when my partner and I were searching for an apartment in Rochester about a year ago. We were living in an Airbnb, and while we didn’t want to eat out every night, we also didn’t want to buy pantry staples to make meals from scratch since we were only in town for a week or so at a time. And that’s when I fell in love with Wegmans’ Cook-in-Bag Thai-Style Red Curry Boneless Chicken.

This item was a true game-changer for us. It’s essentially a plastic pouch filled with uncooked chicken breast and bell peppers in a fragrant Thai coconut curry sauce. The best part is that to cook it, you simply remove the labels from the pouch, place it on a baking sheet, and bake it in the oven for 45 minutes. Alternatively, you can put it in the slow cooker for 2 to 4 hours so it’s ready to go when you get home from work. How much easier can it get than that?

I typically eat this chicken curry over a bowl of rice to add carbohydrates, since that’s the one macronutrient lacking from this product. Since I have some downtime when it’s in the oven, I just rinse some rice and make the rice in a rice cooker so it’s an overall low-effort meal, but you could heat a microwaveable pouch of rice while the chicken cools instead.

Related: The 5 Best Rice Cookers, According to Our Test Kitchen

Each 1-cup serving of this chicken curry has only 2 grams of fiber. Eating it with brown or wild rice could do the trick for upping the fiber content of the meal, but if you prefer white rice like me, you could always add some sautéed snap peas or roasted broccoli to your bowl, or serve it with a side salad. If you’re not super hungry, you could even serve the chicken over zucchini noodles.

Whenever people tell me they’re sick of cooking or at a loss for new dinner ideas, this product is the first thing I recommend. Busy work and personal lives are a reality for so many Americans, and as a dietitian, I find that many of my clients are always on the hunt for convenient dinner ideas. And it’s not just my clients, but my friends, too. I always suggest they make their way over to a Wegmans to purchase the Cook-in-Bag Thai-Style Red Curry Boneless Chicken to ensure they get in a well-rounded dinner even on nights where their energy is low. Plus, satisfaction is so important when it comes to food, and adding new flavor profiles to your meals could help enhance satisfaction.

You can find it in the refrigerated section with the other pre-marinated meats (all of which are convenient and help add different flavors to your meals without adding lots more work) like Indian-style butter chicken and English-style curry chicken. They also sell different cook-in-bag products like meatballs or pork. All of the ones I’ve tried have been delicious, but there’s something about the Thai-style red curry chicken that keeps me coming back for more.

After finding an apartment last winter and living in Rochester for close to a year now, I still can’t leave Wegmans without the Cook-in-Bag Thai-Style Red Curry Boneless Chicken. What started as a must-have for convenient dinners in an Airbnb has turned into a go-to for nights when I don’t feel like making a labor-intensive meal but still want a satisfying dinner. Sometimes, I even prefer this dinner to takeout because it’s just that good. Plus, it’s way more affordable than ordering takeout. You’d think that after months of eating it most weeks, I’d be sick of it, but somehow I’m still not. So if you live on the East Coast, look up your closest Wegmans and give this Thai curry chicken a shot; I’m confident it won’t disappoint.

Read the original article on Eating Well.