Chicken with Sun-Dried Tomato Cream Sauce
Crisp-tender chicken in the most amazing cream sauce ever. It’s so good, you’ll want to guzzle down the sauce!
I know Thanksgiving is in a few days but I just needed a break from all the turkey-stuffing-sweet potato-brussels sprouts taste testing and try something fun with something completely unrelated to Thanksgiving. Like chicken.
But this is definitely not your ordinary chicken dish. It’s better. Way better. After all, how can you go wrong with a sun dried tomato cream sauce with the most crisp chicken thighs?
The cream sauce is just so good, you’ll actually want to just skip the chicken and eat the sauce with a spoon instead!
Chicken with Sun-Dried Tomato Cream Sauce
Crisp-tender chicken in the most amazing cream sauce ever. It's so good, you'll want to guzzle down the sauce!
Ingredients
- 8 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
- Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- ¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes, or more, to taste
- 1 cup chicken broth
- ½ cup heavy cream
- ⅓ cup julienned sun dried tomatoes in olive oil, drained
- ¼ cup freshly grated Parmesan
- ¼ teaspoon dried thyme
- ¼ teaspoon dried oregano
- ¼ teaspoon dried basil
- ¼ cup basil leaves, chiffonade
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
- Season chicken thighs with salt and pepper, to taste.
- Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a large oven-proof skillet over medium high heat. Add chicken, skin-side down, and sear both sides until golden brown, about 2-3 minutes per side; set aside.
- Melt remaining tablespoon butter in the skillet. Add garlic and red pepper flakes, and cook, stirring frequently, until fragrant, about 1-2 minutes. Stir in chicken broth, heavy cream, sun dried tomatoes, Parmesan, thyme, oregano and basil.
- Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer until slightly thickened, about 3-5 minutes. Return chicken to the skillet.
- Place into oven and roast until completely cooked through, reaching an internal temperature of 175 degrees F, about 25-30 minutes.
- Serve immediately, garnished with basil, if desired.
Did you make this recipe?
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Tonight is probably my 5th time making this recipe and I have a little time while it’s in the oven to leave a comment. I love this recipe! My 7 year old son always tell me this is the best chicken he has ever had. Tonight I had a couple extra chicken thighs, which is perfect, because we all eat two and I love left overs. I also made extra sauce to pour on top of pasta. My husband and I are big cooks and it’s not often I find a recipe that I feel the need to comment on and make sure everybody tries it. Thank you!!
I made this last night and it was delicious! I had some issues with the sauce, too. I kept waiting for it to “slightly thicken” initially like the recipe said, and it never did. I put it in the oven anyway, and when I pulled it out, I had the same issue others have mentioned with the sauce separating. I had even drained and blotted my sun-dried tomatoes before adding them in, to try to cut down on the oil and possibly prevent this, but it still separated. So after the chicken finished cooking, I took the thighs out of the pan and added more Parmesan and less than a tablespoon of flour to the sauce, and it thickened into more of a creamy gravy, which we loved. Can’t wait to eat the leftovers later today, and we’ll definitely be adding this to our recipe collection!
Mine came out an oily mess! Delicious, but not pretty like yours. What did I do wrong?
I’m not entirely sure – did you follow the recipe exactly as written without any substitutions?
made this tonight… it was great
This is my second time cooking this recipe and it just gets better and better each time.
can you make this with boneless/skinless chicken thighs? What would I adjust the cooking time to?
Yes, absolutely. But unfortunately, without further recipe testing, I cannot advise the appropriate cooking time. As always, please use your best judgment.
I just made this for dinner. WOW!!! So delicious and my fiancé ate every last morsel. I was working all weekend so I made the sauce 3 days ago and stored it and tonight browned my chicken thighs and threw in the oven with the sauce. Delish!!!
Just made this for lunch this week and I love it! Will make again. I’ll be having it with some penne pasta and a salad 🙂
Huge hit! My father in law did the impossible-never-done-before-thing: he gave me a compliment and told me to save the recipe. Enough said!
UN BE LIEV A BLE! I want to just hug whoever it is that came up with this recipe. I followed it exactly, and couldn’t believe the taste! Oh what a unique, DIFFERENT taste! ABSOLUTELY AMAZING RECIPE, and might I add, I am a horrible cook. I mess up Mac N Cheese. but this came out AMAZING> THANK YOU!
I just adore this recipe so much! It’s so versatile, and it’s one of my favorites of yours and of all time. Thank you for sharing it! 😀 [big smiley]
I just made this recipe last night for the first time and it was amazing!! I wouldn’t change a thing. We put the sauce over pasta and it was delicious. I love all of your recipes!! Thanks for another great one!
Can sear the chicken and place in a slow cooker with the sauce until the chicken is cooked through
I absolutely love this recipe, despite the fact that I can never get this sauce to thicken! I don’t have a cast iron skillet, could that be my problem? Regardless, absolutely delicious.
You can try adding a little bit of cornstarch as needed until the desired consistency is reached.
Can you suggest some sides to pair this with?
My absolute favorite side dish is the garlic parmesan roasted potatoes. But please feel free to check out all of my side dish recipes here.
Might add, I did freeze the cooked thighs individually with sauce and just now defrosted carefully
in the microwave, starting on 50 percent microwave and then twice at regular hear,20 seconds each.
The Chicken Thighs with skin and bone were good size 6 1/2 ounces .
I studied with Madeleine Kamman who is from France, so love this delicious Chicken with sauce!I had chicken stock and wine to use for deglazing and added capers, because they were here on the counter.
I did lightly flour the bone in skin on thighs, so had no problem with the sauce.
Definitely taste the sauce many times before plating!!
I found that this recipe was flawed in a number of ways.
The chicken took a long time to cook, a lot longer than the recipe called for. When the cream sauce was put in the oven, it turned more solid and curdled than creamy as it appears in the picture. When I checked the original website they adapted the recipe from, Closetcooking, I see that they recommended cooking the chicken through in the pan. This would have solved both the issues I had with this meal.
Also, wouldn’t recommend putting it in the oven at all.
Angela, the cooking time listed in recipes are simply used as an estimation, and can vary based on the oven heat as well as the size of the chicken. I have cooked this both in the pan and in the oven, and found that the texture is much more optimal when roasted. But as always, please do what is most comfortable for you.
I have never had any of the issues you mentioned, but I cook a lot and thought I might be able to problem solve a bit for you. I cook the chicken longer in the pan than suggested, but I like very brown crisp skin. I still leave it uncooked in the center and then roast it and it has yet to come out raw or over cooked. I haven’t heard of the cream turning into a solid, but maybe it was the Parmesan cheese. I know if you do not mix it well, it can clump up . I hope you try this recipe again. I do not know any of the creators of this recipe of this page, I just really enoy this recipe.
I made this for the first time last night when I had a friend over for dinner. It was delicious! My guest absolutely LOVED it. I used chicken breasts – I grilled them on the outdoor grill briefly (just enough to get grill marks on each side). I prepped the sauce in a sauce pan and then combined the chicken and sauce in a baking dish and baked covered with foil for 30 minutes. Served over linguine pasta.
UPDATE: Since then I’ve made this recipe many times, and I began to feel the sauce was too runny. I now reduce the amount of chicken broth to 1/4 cup, and add a little flour to the melted butter to make a roux before adding the cream. With these changes I achieve a thicker sauce, which I prefer. I use the same measurements listed on the recipe for two large chicken breasts. I serve on linguine with whole or sliced chicken breasts. Super delicious!
Thank you Linda for your update! That’s great. I’m glad you figured out a way to get the consistency you like! Thanks for sharing 🙂
Quick question about when you add the garlic. Did you turn your heat down because I dumped in the garlic and it immediately turned black :/ did you take it off the heat? I did use a cast iron skillet. My sauce also turned out a little dark but that was probably from the pan. My chicken thighs took 45 minutes to cook which is why my sauce got oily from the skin. Sauce was more saucy around 30 min.
Billy, I did not turn down the heat but maybe your heat source was just set too high to begin with?