The One High-Protein Meal I Eat Every Day (Smoked Chicken + Coconut Rice)

The One High-Protein Meal I Eat Every Day: Smoked Chicken Thighs and Coconut Rice

Somebody asked me, what is the one meal I can eat every day? So first of all, I'm going to tell you, if you don't own a smoker, you need to have a smoker, okay? The way that you get your meat when you smoke it is head and shoulders above any other way of cooking.

The reason has less to do with the smoke flavor and more to do with the temperature. Most people cook chicken fast and hot, which means the muscle fibers tighten up quickly and squeeze water out, and what you get is dry protein you have to choke down with sauce. A smoker runs low and slow, so the connective tissue breaks down into gelatin before the meat has a chance to dry out, and the result holds moisture for days.

I have a pit boss, it's amazing, pellet smoker, works great, keep it clean, take care of it, it'll last you forever.

Now, when it comes to the meal that I could eat every day, the hack that I have for people is yes, chicken thighs are more fatty, which means they're more calorie dense, but the flavor that you get from smoked chicken thighs is like nothing else.

Most people in a cut default to chicken breast because the math looks better on paper. Breast runs around 165 calories per 100 grams cooked with about 31 grams of protein, and thigh runs closer to 210 calories with about 26 grams. So you are paying maybe 45 extra calories and losing a few grams of protein per serving.

That difference is small enough to absorb in a daily total. The problem it solves is much bigger, because the number one reason people abandon a high protein diet is that they stop being able to stand the food.

Smoke your chicken, do the chicken thighs, compensate for the difference in calories, and you are going to thank me, okay? That fat helps to hold the flavor, it keeps it moist.

Fat does two things here. It carries the smoke compounds, since most of what you taste in smoked meat is fat soluble and will not stick to lean tissue the same way. And it buffers the meat against reheating, so the second and third day version does not turn to cardboard in the microwave.

You can smoke a whole grill of chicken thighs and throw them in a Ziploc bag, and it'll still be moist at the end of the week after you're done with it.

That is the real argument for thighs. You are not optimizing one meal, you are optimizing whether you actually eat the sixth meal from that batch on Friday.

For the carb side I use sticky white rice or jasmine rice, cooked in a rice cooker. Use a rice cooker. It holds the water temperature steady, you cannot scorch the bottom, and removing the one step where people mess up is what gets the food made at all.

What I like to do is if you go into the store, I think it's in the sauces section, you can get coconut sauce.

It is high calorie, usually somewhere around 100 calories per serving depending on the brand, so treat it as part of your fat budget rather than a free addition. You are not adding much protein with it. You are adding the thing that makes a plain starch worth eating twice a day.

You make coconut rice, cook your rice, mix some of that coconut stuff in there, throw in your chicken thighs, mix it all together, maybe throw some beans in it.

Beans bring fiber and a little more protein, and they soak up whatever is left in the bottom of the bowl, so nothing tastes dry.

Build it once on a Sunday. A tray of thighs, a pot of rice, a can of beans, and you have five or six meals that hit protein without you thinking about it on a Wednesday night when you are tired.