Lemon Butter Chicken
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Easy crisp-tender chicken with the creamiest lemon butter sauce ever – you’ll want to forget the chicken and drink the sauce instead!
Happy New Year! I know I should really be sharing some sort of salad or quinoa recipe with the start of the year but you know me and my chicken thigh obsession. I just can’t get enough, especially when a lemon butter cream sauce is involved.
And if you’re in the need of some clean greens for the new year diet, well, this dish has plenty of baby spinach. Good enough, right?
Plus, these chicken thighs carry quite a bit of punch with that fresh, zingy lemon flavor and that smoky goodness from the paprika. And this cream sauce is absolutely heavenly. Just be sure to have a spoon ready because you’ll want to sip on it straight from the pan!
Lemon Butter Chicken
Ingredients
- 8 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
- 1 tablespoon smoked paprika
- Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 cup chicken broth
- ½ cup heavy cream
- ¼ cup freshly grated Parmesan
- 3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
- 1 teaspoon dried thyme
- 2 cups baby spinach, chopped
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
- Season chicken thighs with paprika, salt and pepper, to taste.
- Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a Dutch oven over medium heat. Working in batches, 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 Dutch oven. Add garlic, and cook, stirring frequently, until fragrant, about 1-2 minutes. Stir in chicken broth, heavy cream, Parmesan, lemon juice and thyme.
- Bring to a boil; reduce heat, stir in spinach, and simmer until the spinach has wilted and the sauce has slightly thickened, about 3-5 minutes. Return chicken to the Dutch oven.
- Place into oven and roast until completely cooked through, reaching an internal temperature of 165 degrees F, about 25-30 minutes.
- Serve immediately.
Did you make this recipe?
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In the process of making Lemon Butter Chicken. The recipe calls for 8 chicken thighs. I browned 4 at a time then made the sauce. I ended up putting the chicken in a 9 x 13 baking pan with the sauce over the top. Couldn’t fit 8 thighs in my large skillet. Also, your video shows only 4 chicken thighs. Any insight would be helpful. My house smells Delicious!
The video is a reduced version of the full recipe. If the skillet is not large enough, searing in batches (as you did) works perfectly!
The sauce was SO good. Mine never thickened up at all, though, and was very thin (the consistency was like water). Is that correct, or should it have been thicker? I did double the recipe for the sauce because we wanted extra to put over spaghetti which I made on the side. Could that have affected how thick it got?
Yes, it should be a little bit thicker but not as thick as gravy-like consistency.
I made this tonight with boneless, skinless chicken breasts. I seared them as directed and then put in microwave for about 20 minutes as they were large, thick breasts. It was absolutely delicious!
Oven not microwave, oops!
This dish was soooooo incredible! Thank you sooo much! I stumbled onto it and now I am subscribing to you and your talent! Thank you for making me look like a rockstar!!
Can’t wait to try this. No one in my family likes Thyme. Should I substitute with something else, or would it still be flavorful if I completely omit it? BTW, I love the simplicity, yet still fanciness of your recipes. There is rarely one I see posted that I don’t want to try! I also just bought your cookbook! Keep up the great work!
You can substitute with another herb to your liking. Hope that helps!
I’ve made this without- still comes out delicious.
Made this tonight for my family and it was wonderful!!! Even our picky 4-year-old loved it, and it was so easy to make. We already had everything on hand. Thanks!
I can’t wait to try one on my own now! This is way luscious!
Wow, I can’t wait for leftovers tomorrow. This was absolutely delicious over rice! Thank you.
I made this Saturday just as the recipe says… Results, AMAZING….I wouldn’t make any changes.
Thank you for sharing this!
So I tried this in my iron cast skillet (I’m just learning how to cook), and when I put in the butter and garlic, it fried the garlic and I couldn’t get the cream, lemon, cheese to mix because the skillet has grill lines on it. So then I made it the next day in a regular pan and it came out better, but I feel that I over cooked the garlic due to it being on medium high heat. And, the cheese didn’t melt so the sauce wasn’t smooth, it had little crumbles of cheese. Almost like a tapioca. And, it was a bit watery. And, I didn’t put it in the oven, just let it simmer. I ended up turning down the heat. What am I doing wrong ? Though it was still delicious ! But didn’t look as yellow as in the picture.
What kind of cheese did you use? Also, some brands of butter are more yellow than others. Which brand did you use?
Made this this other night and served it over spaghetti noodles – – it was delicious! I didn’t have a pan that went from stove to oven, so after I seared the boneless skinless chicken breasts I made the sauce. Placed the chicken in a 9×13 pan and poured the sauce over it. I baked it at 400 for 30 minutes (uncovered) and it came out perfect! Kinda reminded me of Chicken Picatta a little bit minus the capers. My DH told me to put this recipe in the “definitely you need to make this again” folder! 🙂
I’ll tell you about my experience. your mileage may vary. I knew going into this recipe that i had to make some substitutions. I had finely grated thyme rather than dry thyme, granulated garlic rather than fresh, and grated parmesan romano blend rather than fresh parm. I was also using boneless skinless thighs sense my wife balks at the skin. The first problem came when i put the butter in my preheated-to-medium-high cast iron skillet. it turned black almost as soon as it melted. I set a lower heat, wiped out the skillet and tried again. just above medium worked much better. I have a huge cast iron skillet, i cant recall if it is 14 or 16 inches, but it is heavy as hell, wide as all get=out and still was crowded with 8 chicken thighs. I soldered on. the thighs crisped up as nice as can be expected without the skin. I made sure to dry each side of every thigh with paper towels before administering three grinds pepper, one grind salt, and a scant sprinkling of smoked paprika to each side. At this juncture the recipe instructs to remove excess grease. What is excess? All but enough to coat the pan? All but enough to make a grilled cheese? Since we are building a sauce I only removed about half before adding three teaspoons of granulated garlic. It began to burn almost immediately. I reduced the heat and added the wet ingredients, but the ensuing slurry just tasted like burnt garlic and thyme. I rinsed the pan (you’re not supposed to put water on cast iron! whatever man, i gotta make dinner for my wife who has been working all day.) and wiped it down gently making sure to leave a little bit of the baked on particles from the chicken; as much as I could. I seemed to have removed all visible burnt garlic. I tried again, adding wet ingredients and cheese first and then adding thyme and garlic to taste. Now we have a thin sauce that tastes like romano cheese. It needed richness and acid to balance out the salt and build it up. I probably would have accepted this sauce as a middle schooler’s first attempt at alfredo, but I certainly was not getting out the sauce drinkin’ mug.I added sour cream as a good source of both fat and acid. It improved the balacne, but the main flavor was still salty cheese. I tried adding some drippings from the resting chicken. This move resulted in more flavor from the paprika and chicken fat, but still overshadowed by salt. I then kept adding more heavy cream until i reached about quadruple the amount listed in the recipe.The resulting amalgam was a bland cream sauce the color of walnut shells. I added the rest of the drippings from the chicken, and the chicken itself and baked the whole concoction for 20 minutes. I checked and the internal temp of the thickest piece of chicken was 150 degrees F. I let the dish bake another 10 minutes. The thermometer now read 145. There was barely any sauce left in the pan, and the chicken was fork tender, so I decided my thermometer was defective, and removed the chicken. I tasted the thick sludge that was left, and found that a slightly smoky flavor mixed with thyme and romano was my reward. I added about 3/4 of a cup of heavy cream and the juice of another half a lemon to this paste, tasted it, and decided to add a dash of paprika, and a half a teaspoon of garlic. after coming to a boil, the sauce was finally good, but i felt a little more spice would put it over the top. Three grinds of black pepper later, and voila, I finally wanted to drink the sauce. This turned out to be more a smoky cream sauce than a lemon butter sauce. the ramano, and granulated garlic seem to have confounded my results profoundly. However, i feel that regardless of the ingrediends, this recipe has entirely too little cream to make any adeqyate volume of sauce for the end product. you would never be able to add so much as a tablespoon of sauce to each chicken thigh with the listed quantities. I think the moral of my story is, if you don’t have the exact ingredients, beware of making substitutions in an unfamiliar recipe.
You must be a kitchen novice! You totally changed the recipe. Granulated garlic is nothing more than garlic powder and you would NEVER, EVER saute that! Even fresh garlic burns very easily and will ruin a dish. A cast iron pan is not a good pan for this either with the acidity unless it is enameled cast iron. You cannot crisp up skinless chicken unless you have it coated in flour or something otherwise you are simply drying up the meat. I am sure your cheese problem is what you used. Never use that stuff in the green jar/can or in a bag. They have tons of additives that don’t allow it to melt smoothly and frankly don’t taste good and are salty. I think you made every possible mistake you could on this recipe. There is no substitute for good ingredients and the right ones unless you really know what you are doing. Your spice cabinet makes a huge difference too. Huge differences between fresh herbs and spices to ground or whole or dry. And for heaven’s sake NEVER use table salt when you cook or bake! I haven’t used table salt for ANYTHING in decades. If you are not that great in the kitchen, don’t deviate from a recipe.
I must have a couple of hundred recipes, this one is always delicious,one of our favorites. Thank you for how yummy this is!
I have made this dish 3 times………..LOVE IT. I served it with rice. YUMMY.
I made this last night, although I didn’t have any heavy cream, so I used ordinary cream and it was so yummy! My daughter said there wasn’t enough sauce, so I am making it again tonight with triple quantity of sauce! Still only have ordinary cream lol.
Made this for dinner tonight. Even our picky 4-year-old loved it, and it was so easy to make. We already had everything on hand. Thanks!
Based on the number of comment, I can see I’m not the only fan of this recipe! 🙂 Truly – this dinner is not only delish, but a serious family favorite! Love your page — keep the yummieness coming! 🙂
This dish was delicious! I followed the recipe as written and wouldn’t change a thing the next time. Thank you for contributing to our fine dinner.
Absolutely delicious, even better leftover! I did use boneless, skinless thighs and worked perfectly!
Just made it – it’s delicious
Used coconut milk instead of heavy cream and added baby tomatoes when I added the spinach to the mix for some colour. Used a combination of spinach and rocket
Thanks !
I am hooked
Sounds amazing! 🙂