Asun, grandmother cook: “The juiciest chicken breasts don’t have cream, but rather 1 onion, garlic, 2 peppers and 2 apples”
Diners: 4
- Chicken breast fillets, 500g
- Red peppers, 2 units
- Onion, 1 unit
- Garlic, 1 clove
- Apples, 2 units
- Wheat flour, 50 g
- Vermouth, cognac or wine, 80 ml
- Olive oil, sufficient quantity
- Salt, to taste
- Step 1 We salt the chicken breast fillets, coat them in flour and shake off the excess.
- Step 2 Heat oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat and cook the fillets for about 2 minutes per side, until golden brown. Set them aside on paper towels or a wire rack.
- Step 3 Peel the onion and garlic, remove the stem and seeds from the peppers and chop everything.
- Step 4 Heat a couple of tablespoons of oil in a large frying pan and sauté the vegetables over medium-low heat for about 20 minutes, until very tender.
- Step 5 Peel and core the apples, chop them, and add them to the pan. Cook for 10 minutes, until softened.
- Step 6 Add 80 ml of vermouth, cognac or wine and cook for about 5 minutes, until the liquid has almost completely reduced and the sofrito no longer smells of alcohol.
- Step 7 We blend the sauce with the blender and pass it through a fine sieve.
- Step 8 Return the sauce to the pan, add the chicken breasts and cook over low heat for 5 minutes.
Almost all of us have a memory of a dish that our grandmother cooked better than anyone else, but we have never been able to make it because we never asked her for the recipe.
That's not going to happen to Fran Riera, an Aragonese gastronomic content creator who has set out to collect and share all of his grandmother Asun's recipes.
Recipes that have never appeared in a book, but that also deserve their space, like these chicken breasts in apple sauce.
With this dish, she has launched a series on her Instagram profile (@franriera) entitled "My Grandmother Asun's Recipe Book," in which she wants, as she explains, "to save, make and write all the recipes that my grandmother only has in her memory."
Chicken, the most consumed fresh meat in Spain
According to data from the Food Consumption Panel of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Food month by month, January 2025), each Spaniard consumed 12.66 kilos of fresh chicken meat at home between February 2024 and January 2025.
This data places it as the fresh meat with the highest per capita consumption, ahead of pork (9.42 kilos) and beef (3.95 kilos).
During that period, households bought 593.6 million kilos of chicken, 6.6% more than in the previous twelve months.
Chicken is also the fresh meat whose consumption experienced the greatest growth, surpassing pork (4.7%) and beef (3.6%). More than four out of every ten kilos of fresh meat purchased for home consumption are chicken, and 98.1% of households bought it at least once during those twelve months.
A meat rich in nutrients and low in fat
The Spanish Nutrition Foundation (FEN), in its book "Spanish Food," points out that chicken meat contains high biological value proteins, due to its content of essential amino acids.
It is considered a lean meat, especially when consumed without the skin, which is where a significant portion of the fat is concentrated. Conversely, the breast is the cut with the least fat and is mostly monounsaturated, with oleic acid as its main component, according to the FEN (Spanish Nutrition Foundation).
In terms of micronutrients, chicken is a source of phosphorus, which contributes to the maintenance of bones and teeth, and of B vitamins, especially niacin and vitamin B6.
On the other hand, the Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition (AESAN) recommends a maximum of three servings of meat per week, of 100 to 125 grams each, and prioritizing poultry meats, such as chicken, and rabbit.
- Chicken breast fillets, 500 g.
