Chicken with Lemon, Orange, and Bok Choy

This one-pot dinner is packed with brain-boosting quercetin. Plus, I'm anouncing the winners of our book give-away.

Longtime newsletter readers will recognize this dish as the Cara Cara Chicken I shared a few years ago. I’m bringing it back with a few flourishing touches thanks to BHK reader Jim S. who has it on dinner rotation. He emailed me to say “I never believed I’d voluntarily eat that many red onions and come up smiling. They’re totally neutralized by the orange peel.”

Red onions are a fabulous food to include in your brain-healthy dietary pattern. Here, the onions become irresistibly sweet when sautéed with orange and lemon slices in extra-virgin olive oil. Once they collapse into a heap, you’ll nestle baby bok choy and chicken thighs in the pan to soak up the tart orange and lemon juices as they braise. A last minute scattering of capers brings a pop of salt to each bite.

Quercetin Chicken

My nickname for this recipe is Quercetin Chicken, a shout-out to the unique brain-boosting flavonoid you get from red onions, capers, the peel of citrus fruits, and the leaves of some vegetables, such as bok choy. You may recall quercetin had a brief time in the spotlight during the pandemic because of its ability to support immune function. One of its biological actions is to stop certain viruses from replicating (including SARS-Cov-2), which made it a top drug candidate for COVID-19. Alas, this never came to pass, but the antiviral properties of quercetin are well documented. Which means this braised chicken and citrus dish, which also provides a good dose of vitamin C, is the perfect thing to make if you are fighting off a cold. 

Including quercetin and other flavonoids in the diet may reduce Alzheimer’s risk by as much as 50%, according to this study from Rush University. Another study from Harvard showed eating flavonoid-rich foods translated to less subjective cognitive decline (the term for when you feel like your memory is failing). Recently, Rush researchers also linked flavonoid intake to improved memory and cognitive function. While most Western diets (such as the standard American diet) are low in this antioxidant, quercetin has a crucial role in reducing brain inflammation that disrupts the integrity of the blood brain barrier. Read more about flavonoids in this post and in my book.

So while I created this recipe to give you a mid-winter boost of quercetin, I also want you to have a (mostly) one-pot meal that comes together quickly. The chicken will be done in the time it takes to cook the rice, which I boil like pasta as a time saver (method below in the recipe).