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The Best Easy Baked Chicken Breasts Recipe – delicious, easy, and quick baked chicken breasts that are juicy and tender, right out of the oven!
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At Sweet C’s, I add lots of tips in all of my recipes – because I am a home cook without any formal training, and I find I am more confident making dishes when I understand why it works, and what each ingredient means to the flavor of a recipe – my goal is for even the most beginner home cook to feel empowered in the kitchen.
I want each reader to walk away with a solid knowledge of each recipe, with all of the tips I’ve gathered from extensive testing of each recipe. I also answer questions my friends and family have asked about my recipes, to help everyone better understand the processes we use – and why!
Table of contents
Garlic Butter Baked Chicken Breasts
Baked chicken is one of our family’s favorite easy dinners – it can go in all sorts of easy dinners, is great on salads, and comes out perfectly tender and juicy.
We’re sharing our recipe for the best baked chicken breasts – baked in olive oil, garlic, and a dash of lemon juice – for perfect chicken your whole family will love.
This chicken is delicious any day of the week, and always a huge hit with our kids.
We love to serve baked chicken in Instant Pot Chicken Alfredo, or alongside sauteed zucchini and squash, no knead jalapeno cheddar bread, baked beans, or in chicken and fruit salad, The Best Chopped Chinese Chicken Salad Recipe, and our crazy Easy Bacon Chicken Ranch Macaroni and Cheese Recipe!
You can find our web story for this recipe here.
How To Bake Chicken Breasts
To make the best baked chicken breasts, you’ll need the following ingredients:
- Chicken breasts – chicken is a light, neutral meat that is a great choice for low carb, low calorie diets and is great in a number of recipes since it pairs well with lots of other foods.
- Olive oil – olive oil is a delicious, briny natural fat that is great to cook with chicken that provides healthy fats to a diet and helps keep moisture in meat so it doesn’t dry out or get tough – you can also use butter in place of olive oil.
- Garlic cloves – garlic brings an earthy, pungent flavor to dishes and adds a rich taste to chicken that makes it crave-worthy without adding a ton of calories.
- Lemon juice – lemon juice works to not only tenderize chicken meat and soften as it bakes, but adds a tart, bright flavor that is a perfect compliment to cut through garlic and herbs!
- Italian Herbs – an Italian herb blend combining thyme, basil, oregano, marjoram, and other Italian herbs brings a rich, balanced earthy flavor to dishes that everyone loves. You can swap this multi-tasking herb blend for another blend of herbs you love!
- Celtic sea salt
- Pepper
Once you’ve gathered your ingredients, we will use the following process:
- Prep. Add ingredients to a bowl or plastic bag, covering chicken in marinade. Let sit at least 30 minutes, up to overnight (skip marinating if using frozen chicken breasts.) Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. (Also can bake at 350, for 5-8 minutes longer) Add chicken and part of marinade to baking dish that has been lightly greased with a nonstick cooking spray, or lined with foil.
- Bake. Bake, flipping occasionally, until chicken reaches 160 degrees at the thickest part when using a digital meat thermometer.
- Rest. Remove chicken from oven and lest rest 10 minutes before cutting. Discard marinade/cooking liquid.
- Enjoy! Serve and enjoy!
Tips and Tricks to the Best Baked Chicken Breasts
To see our web story of this recipe, click here.
Are chicken breasts keto? We designed this recipe to work in a gluten and grain free low carb diet. While chicken breasts aren’t always the best choice for a keto diet because they have less fat, this chicken is a good option for a wide variety of keto dishes that call for chicken breast – and great with vegetables, on salads, or other keto meals.
Baking chicken breasts is incredibly easy – just marinate, season, and bake – but there are a couple tips and tricks we use to make sure our baked chicken breasts turn out tender and juicy every time.
Nobody wants dry, tough chicken breasts – so consider some of our following tips:
- Marinate for at least 30 minutes before cooking
- Lightly pound chicken breasts to keep them roughly the same thickness so they can cook evenly
- Use a digital thermometer to gauge chicken doneness instead of going by time to prevent overcooking
What herbs to bake chicken with. This recipe was designed to not only be insanely easy – any one can make this dish regardless of their experience in the kitchen – but it’s also super customizable. We made our marinade and chicken seasonings pretty simple for a reason – this recipe is meant for you to customize however you love it! Use some of our ideas below for different flavors to try swapped out for the Italian Herbs we’re calling for below:
- Za’atar
- Adobo seasoning
- Fajita spices
- Taco seasoning
- Lemon pepper rub
- Montreal steak seasoning
How To Bake Chicken Breasts From Frozen. We recommend baking fully thawed chicken breasts for the best texture – but we’re adding the method to bake chicken breasts from frozen if you’re in a pinch and need dinner on the table. This method is safe to use for chicken right from the freezer, with a few basic tips:
- Plan on double the cook time if cooking from frozen
- Space single chicken breasts out across the pan – do not try to bake a clump of chicken breasts frozen together
- Use a digital thermometer and make sure the middle of the thickest part of the chicken breast cooks to at least 165 degrees
- Cover in olive oil – you won’t marinate chicken if it is frozen – but still bake it in our marinade recipe below to help keep chicken juicy and from drying out
- Flip chicken as it cooks to ensure it is cooking evenly
How to bake chicken without drying it out. The two most important tips to baking perfect chicken are pretty simple – marinate first, and monitor cook time with a digital thermometer.
Marinate chicken. Marinating chicken helps to lock in juices, tenderize meat, and give a great flavor – we’re not only marinating, but baking our chicken in the marinade, for even more flavor!
Easy Chicken Breast Marinade. The base of our chicken’s flavor comes from the marinade we’re baking the chicken in – a simple chicken marinade is really easy to whip up. For any marinade you make, aim for 1 oil (olive oil, avocado oil), 1 acid (lemon juice, vinegar), and herbs. Dry herbs will work best – but you can use fresh if you’d like – add a bit more than dried.
- 1 cup olive oil
- 6-8 cloves garlic (with or without peel)
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon Italian Herbs
- 1 teaspoon celtic sea salt
- 1 teaspoon pepper
Use a digital thermometer. Using a digital meat thermometer is essential for baked chicken to ensure you’ve reached a safe temperature, and to make sure you don’t overcook your chicken breasts. Chicken is cooked at 165 degrees – which means removing from the oven at 160 degrees.
When is chicken breast done baking. Chicken will carryover cook to 165 if you remove from the oven at 160. Always let chicken rest for at least 10 minutes before cutting to help the juices recirculate and lock in.
How Long To Cook Chicken Breasts. Chicken breasts will take about 25 minutes to cook at 350 degrees – 50 if baking from-frozen. One tip to get extra juicy chicken is to cook it for less time at a higher temperature – around 22 minutes at 400 degrees.
- 25-30 minutes at 350 degrees
- 22-25 minutes at 400 degrees
As always, please go by your thermometer temperature, not your clock, to gauge when chicken is done cooking.
Recipe FAQs
Chicken breasts are fully cooked and safe to eat at 165 degrees.
Baked chicken takes 20-30 minutes to bake.
Chicken breasts can bake directly from freezer – double the cook time, make sure to still use marinade to bake in (though you’ll skip actually marinating), and spread out on a pan to help cook chicken evenly.
Chicken can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to four days.
What to Serve With Baked Chicken Breasts
Baked chicken is a recipe that goes with basically everything – we love it alongside broccolini or baby cauliflower, whole roasted cauliflower, whole roasted onions, air fryer corn on the cob, farro salad, and more!
To find the rest of our easy side dishes, please check out our side dish recipe index here.
Other Chicken Breast Recipes
If you’re looking for even more delicious recipes with chicken breasts, please check out some of our favorites below:
You can find our other chicken recipes here.
The Best Easy Baked Chicken Breasts Recipe
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The Best Easy Baked Chicken Breasts Recipe
Equipment
- DI ORO Silicone Spatula Set – Rubber Kitchen Spatulas for Baking, Cooking, & Mixing – 600°F Heat-Resistant & BPA Free Silicone Scraper Spatulas for Nonstick Cookware – Dishwasher Safe (4pc, Red)
Ingredients
- 4 chicken breasts, rib meat and extra fat removed
- 1 cup olive oil
- 6-8 cloves garlic, with or without peel
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon Italian Herbs
- 1 teaspoon celtic sea salt
- 1 teaspoon pepper
Instructions
- Add ingredients to a bowl or plastic bag, covering chicken in marinade.
- Let sit at least 30 minutes, up to overnight (skip marinating if using frozen chicken breasts.)
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. (Also can bake at 350, for 5-8 minutes longer)
- Add chicken and part of marinade to baking dish that has been lightly greased with a nonstick cooking spray, or lined with foil.
- Bake, flipping occasionally, until chicken reaches 160 degrees at the thickest part when using a digital meat thermometer.
- Remove chicken from oven and lest rest 10 minutes before cutting.
- Discard marinade/cooking liquid.
- Serve and enjoy!
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
