16 Diabetes-Friendly Skillet Dinners You'll Want to Make ASAP

Ep. 9: Skillet Broccoli-Cheddar Mac & Cheese
Photo: Joy Howard

Whether you prefer stainless steel or cast iron, these dinners will put your skillet to delicious use. From cozy casseroles and frittatas to flavorful chicken dinners, there's a healthy meal to please everyone. Plus, each of these recipes focuses on complex carbs, like whole grains, and sticks to heart-healthy levels of saturated fat and sodium, so these skillet dinners fit easily into a diabetes-friendly eating pattern. Recipes like our Skillet Lemon Chicken & Potatoes with Kale and Skillet Broccoli-Cheddar Mac & Cheese are surefire ways to spice up your dinner routine.

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Spinach-Mushroom Frittata with Avocado Salad

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Frittatas are like omelets, only easier--and they taste great hot, warm or cold. This vegetable-packed version is spiked with Mediterranean flavor and paired with a cool salad of lemony cucumbers and tomatoes with creamy avocado. This easy recipe is perfect for brunch, lunch or dinner!

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Skillet Lemon Chicken & Potatoes with Kale

Skillet Lemon Chicken & Potatoes with Kale

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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Skillet Chicken Potpie

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A store-bought pie crust, frozen veggies and precooked chicken simplify the prep for this easy potpie. This healthy dinner recipe is comfort food at its best.

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Chicken & Spinach Skillet Pasta with Lemon & Parmesan

Chicken & Spinach Skillet Pasta with Lemon & Parmesan

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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Skillet Broccoli-Cheddar Mac & Cheese

Ep. 9: Skillet Broccoli-Cheddar Mac & Cheese
Joy Howard

Broccoli—just like pasta—makes a tasty pairing with sharp Cheddar. Here, we've combined all three ingredients in a homey casserole that's baked in a cast-iron skillet. Replacing some of the pasta in the dish with vegetables makes it more nutritious and helps you cut down on carbs.

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Salmon with Sun-Dried Tomato Cream Sauce

Salmon with Sun-Dried Tomato Cream Sauce
Jamie Vespa

A jar of sun-dried tomatoes does double duty for this healthy dinner recipe—the flavorful oil they're packed in is used to sauté the shallots and the actual tomatoes help to add delicious flavor to the creamy sauce. Served with perfectly cooked salmon, you really can't go wrong with this easy 20-minute weeknight meal. This recipe is a variation on our insanely popular Chicken Cutlets with Sun-Dried Tomato Cream Sauce recipe by Carolyn Malcoun.

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Chicken Sausage & Spinach Skillet Pasta with Lemon & Parmesan

Chicken Sausage & Spinach Skillet Pasta with Lemon & Parmesan
Jamie Vespa

This one-pan pasta combines tasty chicken sausage and sautéed spinach for a one-bowl meal that's garlicky, lemony and best served with a little Parm on top. It's a quick and easy weeknight dinner everyone is sure to love. This recipe is a variation on our Chicken & Spinach Skillet Pasta with Lemon & Parmesan, which is a super-popular recipe developed by Devon O'Brien.

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Chicken Enchilada Skillet Casserole

Chicken Enchilada Skillet Casserole
Jacob Fox

This simplified take on cheesy chicken enchiladas only requires one pan for cooking and eliminates the need to stuff and roll corn tortillas. Charring the veggies in a cast-iron skillet adds depth of flavor. Don't worry if you don't have one, because you can use any oven-safe skillet instead.

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Stovetop Veggie Frittata

Stovetop Veggie Frittata
Brie Passano

Eggs are one of the cheapest sources of protein. And they offer a delicious and easy avenue for getting veggies, like in this frittata. Using frozen vegetables saves prep time, too.

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Skillet Chicken Breast & Broccoli with Mustard-Rosemary Pan Sauce

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The one-two punch of searing and roasting results in this perfectly browned, moist, and tender skillet chicken recipe.

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Baked Frittata with Butternut Squash, Kale & Sage

Baked Frittata with Butternut Squash, Kale & Sage

This easy frittata recipe is full of fall flavors, thanks to creamy butternut squash, plenty of fresh sage, and earthy lacinato kale.

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Stir-Fried Green Beans with Steak & Peanuts

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Fish sauce, a pungent Southeast Asian condiment, gives this easy stir-fry a flavor punch, but you can use reduced-sodium soy sauce instead. Add more or less crushed red pepper to adjust the heat.

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Summer Skillet Vegetable & Egg Scramble

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Don't toss out those almost-past-their-prime vegetables and fresh herbs. Toss them into this skillet egg scramble for a quick vegetarian meal. Nearly any vegetable will work in this easy skillet recipe, so choose your favorites or use what you have on hand.

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Chinese Sweet & Sour Tofu Stir-Fry with Snow Peas

Chinese Sweet & Sour Tofu Stir-Fry with Snow Peas

This healthy sweet and sour tofu stir-fry is easy to whip together on weeknights. Just be sure to plan ahead so that you can freeze the tofu in advance. It gives the tofu a meatier texture and helps it absorb the sauce.

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Rosemary Chicken with Sweet Potatoes

Rosemary Chicken with Sweet Potatoes

Chicken and sweet potatoes unite with the delicious taste of rosemary in this easy, one-skillet meal. Because we use parcooked and unseasoned sweet potatoes, the cooking time is much shorter--making this recipe perfect for weeknight cooking.

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Lemon-Thyme Roasted Chicken with Fingerlings

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Fingerling potatoes are small, long, knobby spuds that are shaped like fingers. Look for them in the produce department or at farmers' markets.

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