Make the most of spring's bountiful produce with these delicious recipes. Whether the dish spotlights mushrooms, spinach, broccoli or asparagus, you'll love the mix of fresh seasonal flavor on your plate. Each of these meals is low in saturated fat and sodium, per our heart-healthy guidelines, so you can help protect your ticker too. Recipes like our Instant Pot Chicken & Vegetable Soup with Noodles and Easy Pea & Spinach Carbonara are tasty, healthy ways to bring in spring.
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Easy Pea & Spinach Carbonara
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Fresh pasta cooks up faster than dried, making it a must-have for fast weeknight dinners like this luscious yet healthy meal. Eggs are the base of the creamy sauce. They don't get fully cooked, so use pasteurized-in-the-shell eggs if you prefer.
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Gochujang-Glazed Salmon with Garlic Spinach
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Gochujang, a Korean red chile paste, and honey give this salmon a little bit of sweetness and a whole lot of spice.
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Chicken & Spinach Soup with Fresh Pesto
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This fragrant, Italian-flavored soup takes advantage of quick-cooking ingredients--boneless, skinless chicken breast, bagged baby spinach and canned beans. It features a simple homemade basil pesto swirled in at the end to add a fresh herb flavor. If you are very pressed for time, you can substitute 3 to 4 tablespoons of a store-bought basil pesto. Recipe by Nancy Baggett for EatingWell.
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Green Veggie Bowl with Chicken & Lemon-Tahini Dressing
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For this healthy 30-minute dinner, treat your veggies like pasta and cook until al dente, or just done. If you have a little extra time, double or triple the lemon-tahini dressing and use it to quickly dress a salad or as a sauce for steak or shrimp.
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Salmon with Lemon-Herb Orzo & Broccoli
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This healthy salmon dish is as balanced as it is delicious. You add broccoli right into the pot along with the pasta during its last minute of cooking to save time here. One less thing to wash too!
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Mediterranean Portobello Mushroom Pizzas with Arugula Salad
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Roasted portobello mushrooms stand in for pizza crust in these comforting individual "pizzas." An easy arugula side salad makes a vibrant accompaniment.
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Lemon-Garlic Steak & Green Beans
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For a steak that's deliciously tender, flavorful and not too fatty, we reach for strip (also known as New York strip or shell steak). It has less than half the saturated fat of a rib-eye but is more tender than leaner sirloin. Here, we cook green beans in the same pan used to sear the spiced steak. All those delicious drippings add richness to the beans—plus there's one less pan to wash!
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Chicken & Mushroom Ragu
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An electric pressure cooker makes quick work of this rich, savory sauce. Deglazing with wine and scraping up the browned bits from the bottom of the pot is the key to building flavor.
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Instant Pot Chicken & Vegetable Soup with Noodles
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To make a flavorful base for this soup—while still using some shortcuts—we pressure-cook store-bought broth with ginger, garlic, scallions, soy sauce and Shaoxing rice wine.
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Fish Tacos with Avocado-Lime Crema
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If battering and frying fish sounds messy, frozen fish sticks are your fish taco savior in this healthy dinner recipe. Use them for a quick, kid-friendly dinner or try popcorn shrimp. Serve with your favorite salsa and black beans on the side.
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Mushroom-Cauliflower Risotto
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Easy homemade cauliflower rice stands in for regular rice in this healthy vegetable-based risotto, lowering both the calories and carbs in this traditionally starchy dish. To make this a vegetarian meal, use vegetable broth instead of chicken broth.
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Apricot Glazed Chicken with Potatoes & Asparagus
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Curry powder is a powerhouse ingredient because it combines a medley of flavorful spices—usually turmeric, fenugreek, coriander and peppers—all in one jar. Increase the heat in this dish by using a hot or red curry powder.
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Lemon Shrimp & Orzo Salad
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Consider making a double batch of this easy pasta salad--it's delicious the next day. The orzo will absorb the dressing as it sits, so add a little more olive oil and lemon juice if you'd like.
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Vegetable Weight-Loss Soup
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A big bowl of this veggie-packed minestrone will leave you satisfied for hours without consuming a lot of calories, which is helpful when trying to lose weight. Plus, it's an easy way to boost your vegetable servings for the day—something all of us could benefit from. Top with a dollop of pesto before devouring this delicious vegetable soup and consider serving with a hunk of toasted whole-wheat bread to help round out the meal.
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Chicken & Spinach Skillet Pasta with Lemon & Parmesan
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This one-pan pasta that combines lean chicken breast and sautéed spinach for a one-bowl meal is garlicky, lemony and best served with a little Parm on top. I call it "Mom's Skillet Pasta" and she called it "Devon's Favorite Pasta." Either way it's a quick and easy weeknight dinner we created together and scribbled on a little recipe card more than a decade ago, and it remains in my weekly dinner rotation to this day. It's a simple dinner the whole family will love.
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One-Pot Garlicky Shrimp & Spinach
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Shrimp, spinach and garlic brown and cook quickly for a simple one-pot weeknight dinner. A fast pan sauce gets life from zesty lemon juice, warm crushed red pepper and herby parsley. Serve with a slice of whole-wheat baguette to swipe up every last drop of sauce.
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Skillet Lemon Chicken & Potatoes with Kale
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This easy one-pan skillet-roasted lemon chicken is perfect for weeknight dinners. Juicy chicken thighs are cooked in the same pan as baby potatoes and kale for a satisfying meal with the added bonus of minimal cleanup.
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One-Pan Chicken & Asparagus Bake
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In this chicken and asparagus recipe, we use one baking sheet to whip up dinner quickly, veggies included. Pounding the chicken thin helps it cook quickly alongside the carrots and potatoes, with asparagus rounding out the meal. This is one quick dinner recipe you'll be returning to again and again.
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Cabbage Lo Mein
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Jam-packed with a colorful medley of vegetables, this classic noodle dish relies on a bold sesame-soy sauce to tie all the flavors and textures together.
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Easy Sesame Chicken with Green Beans
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Sweet-salty hoisin sauce and nutty sesame team up in this easy meal that's cooked on one baking sheet. Serve this sesame chicken with brown rice and sliced cucumbers, drizzled with sesame oil and rice vinegar.
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Chicken & Vegetable Penne with Parsley-Walnut Pesto
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Homemade pesto may seem daunting, but in this quick pasta recipe you can make a simple sauce in minutes while the pasta water comes to a boil. You can substitute frozen green beans and cauliflower for fresh; in Step 4, cook the frozen vegetables according to package directions before tossing with the pasta and pesto.
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Spicy Orange Beef & Broccoli Stir-Fry
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With fresh broccoli, ginger, red bell peppers and plenty of fresh citrus, this healthy beef stir-fry is sure to become a favorite. And it's ready in 30 minutes, making it the perfect healthy weeknight dinner. Serve with brown rice.
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Vegetarian Stuffed Cabbage
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Though traditional stuffed cabbage recipes are made with meat, here Savoy cabbage leaves are stuffed with a combination of rice, mushrooms, onions, garlic and herbs for a healthy vegetarian stuffed cabbage recipe. The stuffed cabbage leaves gently bake in a simple tomato sauce. This easy stuffed cabbage recipe can be made ahead of time and baked just before serving.
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Ham-&-Cheese-Stuffed Chicken Breasts
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Making a pocket in the chicken breast to hold the stuffing is easy with a good, sharp, thin-bladed knife. Browning the chicken in a skillet before baking gives it a beautiful golden color, and finishing in the oven ensures that it cooks evenly throughout.
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Sesame-Garlic Beef & Broccoli with Whole-Wheat Noodles
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A savory marinade with garlic, ginger, soy sauce and sesame oil infuses flavor into sirloin steak pieces in this healthy beef and broccoli stir-fry recipe. Tip: Partially freeze the beef for easier slicing.
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Smoky Shrimp, Corn & Pea One-Pot Pasta
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Make your sauce and pasta all at once with this fast weeknight pasta dinner recipe. By using the exact amount of water you need to cook the pasta--no colanders here--the starch that cooks off into your pasta water, which you usually drain away, stays in the pot, giving you delectably creamy results.
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Buttermilk Fried Tofu with Smoky Collard Greens
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Dipping tofu in buttermilk makes the coating stick for a crispy pan-fried tofu, reminiscent of fried chicken. Spicing up the collards with paprika coats them with smoky flavor while keeping this dish vegetarian. And this quick, easy and healthy dinner comes together in just 25 minutes, so it's great for busy weeknights.
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Vegan Roasted Vegetable Quinoa Bowl with Creamy Green Sauce
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In a vegan riff on green goddess dressing, cashews provide a creamy base with tons of flavor from herbs and apple-cider vinegar. Drizzle it all over this bowl of quinoa and roasted vegetables to make a satisfying vegan dinner or easy packable lunch that is ready in just 30 minutes.
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Instant Pot Chicken Soup with Root Vegetables & Barley
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Be sure to use bone-in chicken here--it enhances the flavor of the broth, and the bones are easy to remove after cooking. This healthy chicken soup can be made in an Instant Pot or pressure cooker.
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Roast Chicken with Parmesan-Herb Sauce
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A store-bought rice blend and quick-cooking chicken breast help get this healthy chicken recipe on the dinner table fast. Check the label to avoid excessive sodium or other undesirable ingredients. Other herbs, such as rosemary and sage, are also delicious in this recipe.
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Chipotle-Orange Broccoli & Tofu
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Chipotle peppers add kick to this tofu and broccoli stir-fry recipe. If you're shy about spice, cut back on the amount or leave them out completely. Serve over brown basmati rice.
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Spicy Chicken and Snow Pea Skillet
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Chock-full of nutrients, snow peas shine in this 20-minute, harissa-sauced, one-pot meal that feeds the whole family. Harissa is a North African hot chile paste--use just a teaspoon if you prefer a mild flavor.
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Rainbow Grain Bowl with Cashew Tahini Sauce
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This vibrant bowl is packed with nutrients to keep you full for hours. Look for precooked lentils in the refrigerated section of the produce department.
