Chicken Recipes & Ideas

If you’re lucky enough to have a back patio, front porch, or even just a fire escape, now is the time to enjoy dinner al fresco. There’s really nothing like sitting outside on a summer evening, enjoying a simple meal and a cold glass of wine. This skillet chicken with lemon, olives, and potatoes is the perfect dish to make for such a supper. To start, you’ll need to preheat your oven.

When even the idea of turning on your oven or stove makes you sweat, no-cook recipes are the answer to getting something of substance (read: not just Popsicles) on the table. These chicken salad wraps are a perfect candidate — all you need is some cooked chicken (maybe some you prepped ahead of time, or a store-bought rotisserie version) and a microwave. This version of chicken salad is a little different from the standard (read: kinda bland) version you’re probably familiar with.

If you’re prepping for your 4th of July party tonight, chances are you need to get something simple and delicious on the table for dinner. This honey-orange chicken fits the bill perfectly. Make it, eat it, and then get back to assembling your berry frosé ice pops for tomorrow’s big BBQ. The key to this dish is the flavorful glaze, which does take some time to make on the stove — luckily it’s hands-off time!

Once summer rolls around, we all want to spend as much time outside as possible. After a day stuck in the office, the last thing you want to do is spend an hour or more in your kitchen cooking dinner. That’s where this quinoa salad comes in — it’s filling, flavorful, and comes together in 20 minutes. The key to getting this salad on the table in 20 minutes is using a store-bought rotisserie chicken. All you have to do is shred it — no cooking required!

Somehow it’s Monday already (RIP, weekend) and you forgot to meal plan again. Don’t despair! I’ve got a delicious recipe for you to make tonight that everyone in your family is sure to love. It does require you to stand at the stovetop, but at least you don’t have to turn on the oven! With 25 minutes of prep time and 10 minutes of cook time, this creamy chicken and veggie dish is almost a 30-minute meal.

If you’re looking for a fast and fancy weeknight dinner, this flavorful skillet chicken is just the ticket. It comes together quickly, cooks all in one pan, and makes a great lunch the next day (if you manage to have any left over, that is).

Whether you’re following a Paleo diet or not, Nom Nom Paleo’s blog is full of delicious, easy-to-assemble recipes. Take these sheet pan chicken fajitas, for example. Instead of standing at the stovetop sautéing ingredients, you can throw them all on one pan and let them do their thing in the oven.

Allow me to paint a picture for you: It’s dinnertime, and you have a table of hungry people waiting with anticipation. You open the oven door, pull out a skillet filled with perfectly cooked chicken thighs and rice, and set it on the table. Everyone digs in and proclaims how good it is. You smile and pat yourself on the back for another successful weeknight meal. And when it’s time to clean up, you only have one pan to wash. Sound too good to be true? It’s not!

This 30-minute one-pan meal comes together with minimal ingredients but packs big flavor. It’s wholesome and filling and everyone in your family is sure to love it. If that doesn’t check all your weeknight dinner boxes, I don’t know what will! The secret to getting flavorful results in such little time is all in the spice blend.

Kitchn’s Delicious Links column highlights recipes we’re excited about from the bloggers we love. Follow along every weekday as we post our favorites. What are you grilling on Monday? If your answer is just burgers and hotdogs, may I suggest these chicken kebabs? No, this is not the dry, bland chicken you might’ve had at cookouts before — this chicken is moist and flavorful, thanks to one special ingredient. Yogurt!

I love when a recipe can be stretched in so many different ways. You make one big batch, eat some for dinner that first night, and then use up the leftovers all week long. Pollo verde, or chicken braised in a spicy tomatillo sauce, is a perfect candidate for this. This dish has some serious flavor power going on. First you sear some bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs in a Dutch oven.

Our love for the slow cooker here at Kitchn will never die. You really can’t beat the convenience of throwing a bunch of ingredients in, walking away while it does its thing, and then coming back to a cooked meal ready and waiting for you. Here, the trusty appliance helps you get chicken piccata — pasta included — on the table. The slow cooker saves dinner again!

Bruschetta is one of my favorite appetizers. Crusty bread, juicy tomatoes, fragrant basil — what’s not to love? And while a tray of bruschetta (with a cold glass of rosé) is a delightful meal in the summertime, it’s not exactly the most well-rounded dinner. Enter: this bruschetta chicken. It cooks right on a sheet pan, along with some garlic Parmesan potatoes, for an easy weeknight supper. When I say this dish is easy, I mean it.

When Cinco de Mayo and National Enchilada Day join forces, delicious things happen. Even if you’re not celebrating either holiday, this enchilada dip — packed with green chiles, chicken, and cheese — will be the most popular dish on the table at your next party. Making enchiladas isn’t hard, per se, but they do require a bit of legwork (sometimes you just don’t want to fill and roll all those tortillas!).

The sheet pan meal strikes again with this easy, weeknight-friendly chicken souvlaki. If you’re a fan of Greek flavors like lemon and oregano, and ingredients like kalamata olives and feta, you’re going to love this dish. The secret to getting everything to cook evenly is to cut the potatoes into one-inch chunks, the peppers into thick strips, and the onions into thin slices.

I’ve never feared dry, flavorless chicken breasts because I’ve always had honey curry chicken in my life. This dish has been in my family for as long as I can remember — sweet honey mingling with tangy Dijon mustard, fragrant curry powder, and a bit of rich melted butter to make the most flavorful and yet most ridiculously simple sauce for the meat.

This is not a drill, you guys. We’ve figured out a way to get crispy chicken skin in the slow cooker. Until now, crispy was hardly a word synonymous with slow cooking. Instead, we could rely on the slow cooker to quietly tenderize chicken into juicy, pull-apart pieces. To be clear, this method doesn’t work with any cut of chicken, but it reliably turns skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs into crispy, juicy cooked chicken, perfect for eating straight from the pot.

Another weekend has gone by, and now it’s back to the grind. How about we ease into the week by making this simple sheet pan chicken with veggies for dinner tonight? The key to success with this sheet pan meal is to buy a small sweet potato and microwave it first before dicing and adding it to the sheet pan. This way, the potato will be perfectly cooked alongside the chicken breast, broccoli, bell pepper, and green beans.

When you’re tired at the end of a long day (like maybe today) and you don’t feel like making anything too complicated for dinner, this sheet pan chicken will be there for you. After a little prep work, everything cooks together on one pan in the oven, leaving you free to change into comfy clothes, pour a glass of wine, and maybe even read a few pages of that book you started a month ago. While baked chicken might sound bland or boring, this recipe is far from that.

You know you can't resist crispy skin and a sticky glaze.

I love one-dish meals, especially ones that involve fennel and lemon. The aromatic anise flavor of fennel and its juicy bite, caramelized around the edges by the heat of the oven — ah, it’s delicious. So you can see how this quick, one-pan dish is really my favorite meal of the past month. My love of chicken thighs is well-documented.

Do you scratch your head every Monday evening, wondering what you’re going to pull together for dinner? After a long day at work — where all your mental energy went into tackling your email inbox and dealing with the tasks you happily abandoned on Friday afternoon for “Future You” — you don’t want to think too hard about supper. Allow me to choose something for you … something like this skillet chicken.

I’ve extolled the virtues of the sheet pan meal before — it seems I have a thing for chicken sheet pan meals, especially, as evidenced here and here — and this recipe is no exception. By putting all your ingredients on one sheet pan and roasting them in the oven, making a wholesome, satisfying dinner (and cleaning it up!) is totally possible on a weeknight. This sheet pan supper calls for bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs.

Did you know that saltimbocca literally means “jumps in the mouth”? That description could not be more fitting for this weeknight version of the Italian restaurant favorite. This dish starts off with crisp, tender potato rounds and soft bundles of garlicky spinach, which creates the base for the herbed chicken that’s covered with salty prosciutto and melted cheese. It’s basically the dish chicken breast has been waiting for.

Need something quick and delicious for dinner tonight? Sheet pan meals to the rescue again! This one — with chicken, veggies, and a flavorful “stir-fry” sauce — definitely doesn’t disappoint. Now, there’s something to be said for actually stir-frying in a hot wok, but this recipe allows you to put all your ingredients on one sheet pan, place it in the oven to bake, and walk away. It doesn’t get much easier than that!

If you love to host friends at your place, but you’re more of an appetizer aficionado than a sit-down-dinner-party pro, you need to add these chicken skewers with peanut sauce to your recipe repertoire. This recipe transforms plain ol’ boneless, skinless chicken breast into an irresistibly flavorful dish by cooking it on the grill. If you’re lucky enough to live somewhere warm enough to grill outside, by all means, do it.

I recently shared a simple slow-cooker chicken and potato dinner with you all, and while you can’t beat the convenience of that recipe, this one-pan chicken is a close second. Made in a cast iron pan with sweet potatoes and green beans, you’ll definitely want to add this to your weeknight rotation. Part of what makes this recipe so delicious is the use of bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs.

It’s nice to know that at the end of a long Monday you can still put together a delicious, healthy meal for your family without too much fuss. The sheet pan meal is here to save your weeknight again — this time with honey-garlic-lemon chicken and baby potatoes. This meal comes together in under an hour, with 20 minutes of hands-on prep time and 30 minutes of cook time. While your oven is preheating, marinate the chicken breasts in lemon juice, honey, soy sauce, and minced garlic.

When two food holidays — National Taco Day and Taco Tuesday — fall on the same day, you are pretty much obligated to celebrate. And what better way than with ranch chicken tacos? If you’ve got time today, you can throw the ingredients for the chicken — boneless, skinless chicken breasts, taco seasoning, and ranch seasoning — into the slow cooker so dinner is waiting for you when you get home.

All you have to do to make chicken salad a hundred times more interesting is add in a chopped apple. An apple adds crunch, sweetness, and freshness, and you’ve also taken care of eating a serving of fruit for the day. When apple season hits, make this chicken Waldorf salad your go-to lunch, or leave a batch of this in your fridge so that dinner is waiting for you when you get home.

The next time a craving for teriyaki chicken strikes, you don’t have to go to the mall food court to get your fix. With only 10 minutes of prep time, you can have moist, flavorful chicken teriyaki at home, thanks to the slow cooker. All you have to do is throw boneless, skinless chicken breasts, water, cornstarch, sugar, soy sauce, apple cider vinegar, garlic, ginger, and pepper into your slow cooker; cook it on LOW for four hours; and then shred the cooked chicken with two forks.

As cooler weather settles in, the craving for something warm and gooey becomes fierce — here’s the solution. These melts, stuffed with chicken, cheddar, and apples, bring together some of the best flavors of the season to satisfy that craving. They’re hot and toasty and made in one big batch on a baking sheet, which makes them a simple yet ideal way to cap off a fall day. The best part about these sandwiches is that they are made all at once on one baking sheet.

While corn flakes are typically reserved for your morning cereal bowl, they make an excellent coating for fish and poultry. Case in point? This crunchy chicken Parmesan. To make the crispy coating, you first need to crush the corn flakes into fine crumbs and then mix them with grated Parmesan, salt, pepper, and dried oregano. You dredge the chicken first in flour, then in eggs, and finally in the cornflake coating before pan-frying until golden-brown.

Lean into fresh fig season while you can — it’s slow to arrive and quick to leave. If you’re lucky enough to live in a region where they are easy to come by, you likely already know this and are eating them by the handful. For the rest of us, where the arrival of figs means only displays of pints from California at the grocery store, we often don’t know the glories because frankly, those shipped containers just aren’t as good.

This is the part of summer we’ve all been waiting for — when the best tomatoes of the season take over the tables at the market. Of course you’ll want to get your fill or them eaten as is. Along with creamy mozzarella and fresh basil, these tomatoes are the simplest way to perk up that weeknight chicken breast. There are more than a few ways to cook chicken breast, but this method is hands-down my favorite. It starts with well-seasoned pieces of chicken and a wickedly hot pan.

When getting a hearty, delicious meal on the table night after night feels like a chore, turn to the one-skillet meal. This recipe features chicken thighs in a mustard-bacon sauce — and it’ll restore your faith in your ability to whip up a quick weeknight supper with tons of flavor. To get the most mustard flavor, you first marinate the chicken thighs in a mixture of Dijon, smoked paprika, and salt and pepper.

This is our way of reimagining the chicken Caesar salad — a cozy spin on a classic that’s here to stay. From the romaine and the chicken, to the croutons and the dressing, it has all the components you love and expect. The greens and chicken are roasted in the same pan, with drippings whisked into a rich dressing. Caesar flavor comes through in both the roast chicken and the dressing that garnishes the salad.

Sometimes fusion food just works. Case in point? These chicken quesadillas with a spicy gochujang sauce. Drawing influences from both Mexican and Korean cuisine, this mash-up is a real winner. To make these quesadillas, you’ll first need to cook up some chicken breast. If you have leftover chicken breast (or a store-bought rotisserie chicken in the fridge), you’re already one step ahead of the game. Gochujang, the Korean fermented chili condiment, is the true star of the show here.

In the warmer months, I like to swap grain bowls for rice noodle bowls that I can enjoy cold or at room temperature. With the right mix of toppings and flavors, rice noodle bowls are satisfying without being too heavy. This recipe brings the flavors of sesame chicken to the noodle bowl, with a sweet and savory mix of tamari, sesame oil, brown sugar, and a splash of rice wine vinegar. To keep this recipe quick and easy, the skillet marinade for the chicken doubles as the sauce of the noodle bowl.

If the one-pan cooking craze has taught us anything, it’s that there’s something so satisfying about making your meal in one vessel. And these Mediterranean chicken packets — layered with red peppers, olives, artichokes, and sun-dried tomatoes and wrapped in foil — are no exception.

Ready to make your taco game even stronger? Me too! The good news is that it’s not about fancy ingredients, an obscure recipe, or extra time in the kitchen — it’s all about the slow cooker, a few spices, and the toppings of your choice. When I think about chicken tacos, I want things simple, fresh, easy, and flavorful. This recipe hits all those requirements, with taco-spiced shredded chicken, fresh salsa and guac, and a sprinkle of fresh cilantro.

Tired of eating the same bland chicken for dinner? I’ve got just the thing for you. This chicken is sticky, sweet, salty, and spicy, with soy sauce, chili flakes, lemon, and a surprising ingredient that’s lurking in the back of your pantry. The sweet, sticky element in this dish comes from apricot jam! That’s right — apricot jam’s not just for toast or biscuits; it makes a wonderful glaze for all sorts of proteins, but this chicken is a great place to start.

Barbecue is a much-loved summer meal in my house, whether it’s a slow cooker full of pulled chicken in sauce, or a slab of ribs from our local BBQ truck — smoky and fatty, leaving drippings down your arm as you gnaw them on the back porch. Pork, chicken, beef — whatever the meat, barbecue is such a treat, and I especially love a good chicken barbecue sandwich topped with crunchy, creamy slaw. But for an everyday meal, I like to flip the bowl and start with the vegetables first.

One-pan meals are the true heroes of weeknight dinners, and this lemon-Parmesan chicken with asparagus is no exception. With just a little bit of prep and about 20 minutes in the oven, this bright, flavorful dish can be yours tonight. The key to everything cooking evenly when making a one-pan meal is staggering your ingredients.

You might be tired of heavy winter braises by now since spring is in full force, but that doesn’t mean you should retire the braising pot just yet. All the gorgeous spring vegetables still work beautifully in a quicker, lighter braise — one where you can still taste the unique flavors of each vegetable. Chicken is the perfect protein for a quick braise.

There's something magical that happens when you combine iced tea with lemonade.

Remember the good ol’ days, when the only thing to do in your small town was go hang out at the mall? You’d meet your friends, shop a little, and then invariably end up in the food court. And while a slice from Sbarro was tempting, you always ended up with a plate piled high with chicken teriyaki and steamed white rice. Get ready for some serious nostalgia, folks, because this recipe perfectly captures that ubiquitous mall meal.

Can you bake or slow-cook frozen chicken? Nope … but you can pressure-cook it! Toss rock-hard frozen pieces of chicken into the pressure cooker and serve fall-off-the bone flavorful meat in less than 30 minutes. Slow-cooking, stovetop simmering, or oven braising frozen chicken will keep it in the “danger zone,” (temperatures between 40°F and 140°F) long enough for the meat to host a stomach-wrenching bacteria party.

Do you love chicken tikka masala? If so, you’re in luck — this comforting bowl of soup plays off the flavors of the Indian restaurant favorite. Intensely spiced, with coconut cream and crushed tomatoes to round it out, this soup is sure to become a weeknight dinner staple.

The signs of a good party are as follows: good friends, good drinks, and really (really) good wings. When there’s a whole basket of crispy wings coated with a succulent sweet, savory, or spicy sauce, you can bet no one’s eating just one. Luckily you can crank trays of these wings out because they’re baked in the oven with only three ingredients. Wings are all about the sauce! Let’s be honest — we’re not really in it for the meat.

When I was 17 and an ardent vegetarian (I’ve since recovered), my good friend Allison introduced me to soba noodles. These nutty, chewy, buckwheat strands cooked up faster than pasta and were delicious with a quick sauce of rice vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, and minced ginger. I was doing much of my grocery shopping at Asian markets at the time and buying soba noodles by the armful. But then I found peanut sauce and my soba noodles took on a whole new, far more delicious life.

Looking for an easy meal to whip up on a busy weeknight? This spicy Thai chicken stir-fry — with peanut sauce, grilled pineapple, and fresh basil — is just what you need for the cold nights ahead. This stir-fry has a lot going for it — tender chicken breast, crunchy veggies, spicy chili sauce, sweet pineapple — but what I love most is how quickly it comes together. Because of the fast-cooking nature of stir-fries, you can have dinner on the table in 30 minutes.

I gave the usual noodles the boot in this sesame ginger chicken salad. Instead I tossed shredded celery root (also known as celeriac) with a simple sesame seed ginger vinaigrette made with toasted sesame oil, maple, and tamari. A handful of chopped fresh basil is added for even more flavor. Calling celery root the chimera of vegetables would be a bit of a culinary exaggeration, but I am not going to deny that it is a bit of a changeling.

Chicken tamales drenched in mole are a staple of the Christmas season. They are a little time-consuming (but not hard), and best when made with friends and family. In fact, the making of the tamales is almost as important as the eating of the tamales. Gathering together to create this beloved food has become one of my favorite traditions of the holiday season. I like to break the process up over a couple of days.

Sometimes I look at a package of chicken breast and just sigh. I mean, I get it — it’s easy, convenient, and a wonderful blank slate for pairing with vegetables and sides. You don’t even have to think about it. And believe me, there are many times when I don’t want to think about dinner.

In my chat with beloved chef Jacques Pépin about home cooking, he mentioned this braise full of juicy dark-meat chicken and vegetables that his mother used to make. I loved the name, which really reflects the essence of this dish that pairs chicken with a full range of vegetables from the garden. Jacques says, “Jardinière means ‘gardener’ in French, and the vegetables change according to what is in season or in my garden.

Our piece aboutJamie Oliver’s chicken in milk got me thinking about other possibilities for cooking a whole chicken in milk — what could be easier than filling a pot with liquid and spices, turning on the heat, and walking away until what’s left is the most succulent fall-off-the-bone bird? So I decided to try the sweet and pungent flavors of coconut milk, lemongrass, and star anise.

When you don’t know what to make for dinner and you’re considering calling your favorite Thai takeout spot, give this one-pan chicken and potato recipe a try. It’s easy enough to make any day of the week — yes, even on a Monday. Grab a large, deep-sided roasting pan and fill it with a large chicken (cut into eight pieces) and some new potatoes.

I love a simple stir-fry that combines one protein and one vegetable; not only is it easy to prepare, but it’s also an entire meal when served with a bowl of rice. No need to prepare a side dish! Because let’s face it — sometimes we just don’t have time for that. The great thing about this dish is that it can be made from start to finish in just 20 minutes.

While I love pumpkin in all its sweet applications — pie, ice cream, cookies, cake — I always forget it has a savory side, too. Maybe that’s because I’ve been missing out on one very crucial way to use pumpkin in a savory capacity: baked pumpkin fries. Seriously, pumpkin fries — where have you been all my life?

This is one of those dishes that makes you feel quite pleased with yourself. Fast, easy, healthy, and more delicious than Chinese takeout – a series of winning propositions. You can prep pretty much all the ingredients ahead of time, making this a fantastic last-minute weeknight dinner. The sweetness in the sauce makes this a dish that normally picky eaters will lean into. There’s plenty of sauce, too, which you’ll be happy about as you spoon it over hot rice or quinoa.

Do you have a cast iron skillet and an hour to spare? Then you should make this cilantro lime chicken. Serve it with some corn on the cob and an icy-cold drink, and you’ve got the perfect summer dinner. This chicken is loaded with flavor. You first season the thighs with a spice mix, then throw them in the hot skillet until they turn a deep golden-brown. Then you remove the chicken from the skillet and make a pan sauce with wine, chicken broth, lime juice, and garlic.

Want some juicy, tasty chicken for a salad or a dish of pasta? Let me show you the easiest, most foolproof way to get yourself some chicken breasts that are actually juicy (not dry) and easy to make. The only catch? It takes some trust. Let me explain. I discovered this super simple stovetop method in my mother’s old edition of Joy of Cooking, and it has been my go-to method for years. It essentially poaches the chicken in its own juices.

Lettuce is so much more than salad, you know. This week we’re bringing you five very different recipes that show off lettuce in different ways, and today’s may just be my favorite: Nigel Slater’s cross between a salad and a stir-fry, with chicken cooked in a flash with ginger and garlic, and folded together with barely-wilted lettuce and pea shoots. It’s a super fast meal bursting with garlicky, spicy flavor, and packed with greens.

It really is hyperbole to call any recipe the best — and yet we still quest after that singular experience, that recipe that will make us go yes! that was amazing! Contenders come across my radar rarely; when it comes to chicken, just one other recipe exploded off the page into hyperbolic category (remember that Jamie Oliver chicken in milk?). But here comes another chicken recipe, swaggering into the ring and asking for serious respect. The catch, here? It only has two ingredients.

I can’t stop staring at the photos for this recipe. Maybe it’s the gorgeous seared chicken, maybe it’s the perfect basil chiffonade, or maybe it’s that warm, beautiful cream sauce that’s pulling me in. Whatever the reason, this recipe is going on my dinner list. This recipe reminds me of my favorite chicken tikka masala recipe. All the main ingredients are there: chicken thighs, tomatoes, and cream.

This recipe is a riff on Chinese bai qie ji, or poached chicken. The chicken is marinated in soy sauce, sesame oil, and hoisin for at least thirty minutes or overnight before being cooked on the stovetop. Throw in a scallion ginger sauce for good measure. I love the colors of the recipe – the bright red color with the scallion ginger sauce is dramatic enough for a dinner party, but also makes a great healthy weeknight meal. Just add some noodles or roasted veggies.

Winter weather brings out what I call my Braising Instinct. I drift towards meals that call on the basic formula of all braised dishes: hot sear, slow simmer, a final dish that’s lusciously saucy. I’ve braised pork, lamb, short ribs, cabbage, eggplant, and so many others — but, in this recipe, chicken finally gets the star treatment. Chicken thighs make a quicker braise than most. Just an hour will give you a saucy dish of shredded chicken in a smoky bacon sauce.