A bowl is the easiest Mexican main to make pancreas-friendly, because you control every layer. Bake cumin-lime chicken instead of frying, build a bright lime rice, add beans and fresh salsa, and you don’t miss the cheese or the cream. It looks like a full restaurant plate, and it skips the bell pepper, paprika and chilli I can’t have.
A good “feed the whole table” dinner where you can eat the same thing as everyone else.
Serves 4. Roughly 5.5 g fat and 500 kcal per serving.
Phase & care: Chicken breast, rice, lime, coriander and cumin are P1. Courgette is fine peeled and de-seeded. Black beans and cooked onion are P2, and raw onion in the salsa is a careful-small-amount item for me, so go easy or leave it out in the gentle phase. No bell pepper here, it’s a hard no on my list.
Ingredients
- 500g skinless chicken breast, sliced
- 2 tsp cumin, 1 tsp dried oregano
- 2 courgettes (peeled, centre removed), sliced
- 250g rice
- Juice of 2 limes, large handful coriander
- 1 tin black beans, drained
- Fresh salsa: ripe tomato (skinned and seeded), a little onion, lime, coriander
- 1 tsp olive oil for the tray
Method
- Toss the chicken and courgette with the cumin, oregano and the teaspoon of oil across the whole tray. Bake at 200C for 22-25 minutes.
- Cook the rice. Once done, stir through lime juice and chopped coriander.
- Warm the black beans with a little of their liquid and a pinch of cumin.
- Build bowls: lime rice, chicken and courgette, beans, fresh salsa on top.
- Extra lime over everything.
Fresh salsa is your “sauce.” It does the brightening job sour cream usually does, with none of the fat.
Stepan’s rule: Build meals in layers you control. A bowl beats a wrap or a fried dish because you decide exactly what goes in and how much fat each layer carries.
The fat budget behind every number here, with 75 tested low-fat recipes sorted by phase, is in the book. Get PancreasZen: the patient’s manual.
Not medical advice. This recipe reflects one patient’s low-fat approach grounded in published guidance. Fat tolerance is individual. Check with your own healthcare team before changing your diet.