Does it ever feel like the summer gets trimmed shorter each year? Autumn awaits and as school starts again, everyone could benefit from back to school meal prep. These ideas are not just reserved for houses with school age children—instead, you’ll find ideas to benefit people who need fresh ideas for dinner, or those who want to spend time doing something other than cooking. This season is full and busy, so the dried fig recipes below are like your pinch hitters in the end-of-summer, but not yet autumn window of time. We’ve classified them by cooking type for your convenience.
SHEET PAN: Back to School Meal Prep
The beauty of a sheet pan dinner is that everything goes onto the sheet pan and cooks together, making minimal mess and easy clean-up.
Sheet Pan Chicken Thighs with Fennel, Potatoes + Golden Fig Relish
A homey dish made better with an easy Golden Fig shallot relish spooned over the top that gives it a gourmet touch (especially with the addition of Madeira wine that cooks out of the relish). The chicken thighs cook and stay juicy while potatoes become fork-tender and fennel caramelizes.
Sheet Pan Chicken Breasts with Mustard Fig Sauce & Veggies
Chicken breast can dry out if cooked too long, so this sheet pan dinner benefits from a fig mustard sauce spread all over the chicken that infuses the poultry with flavor while keeping the meat juicy. We like adding broccoli to the sheet pan with the potatoes but you could swap in cauliflower.
SKILLET: Back to School Meal Prep
Fig Naan Pizza with Arugula & Caramelized Onions
We love pizza night and it doesn’t have to be relegated to the weekend. The cast-iron skillet superbly conducts heat, crisping up naan bread that gets topped with caramelized onions cooked low and slow separately until silky without the need for tending to them. Then, a shower of arugula leaves and sliced dried mission figs for a pizza that kind of doubles as salad.
Bacon Fig Naan Pizza with Garlicky White Sauce
Take that same idea of crisping naan in a cast-iron skillet, but go a bit further in the pizza territory to make a garlicky, cheesy white sauce. Sprinkle on chopped cooked bacon (we like to cook slices enrobed in paper towels in the microwave until crispy 1:30 – 2:00 minutes to cut back on grease and for quick prep), along with slices of plump dried mission figs for a quick burnishing under the broiler.
