Lemon Butter Chicken
This post may contain affiliate links. Please see our privacy policy for details.
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?
Tag @damn_delicious on Instagram and hashtag it #damndelicious!
I made my own slight modifications but, hands down, this makes the top 10 best savory dishes I’ve ever tasted. Bravo!
I made this dish as a new-to-the-kitchen chef for my then boyfriend. We’re now married, and love having this regularly! Absolutely delicious and hits so many flavor notes. Love serving it with roasted broccoli to sop up the sauce!
Lemon Butter Chicken is the best recipe I have ever cooked.
Amazing! I made this dish today for my family and there were no leftovers WHICH IS UNHEARD OF IN MY HOUSE … so I made a second batch after dinner was cleaned up for everyones lunches tomorrow! Will be adding frequently to my meal plan!
Beautiful, light and bursting with flavour! Super easy to make. Thank you for this recipe!
Has anyone subbed natural yogurt for cream successfully? Have everything but the cream in the house
I have made this recipe so many times. And i don’t like to repeat recipes. I sometimes swap out other greens for the spinach, like chard. Deliscious!
I love this recipe and often use milk instead of cream and cook the sauce a little longer to thicken. Always looks beautiful and is delicious
Delicious! Made this doubling the sauce as recommended by other comments here. We made it with mashed potatoes but will make it with egg noodles next time! Also made it with boneless, skinless chicken thighs and made it completely on top of the stove. Thank you!!
Dear Miss Rhee,
The Lemmon Butter Chicken is absolutely one of the best recipes we have found. We’ve tried other recipes from your cook book, and they were all big hits. Then we found….Lemmon Butter Chicken, and WOW! Being Italian, family dinners on Sunday means some kind of pasta. But know the Lemmon
butter chicken is in the Sunday mix, thank you.
Gary
Was wondering if It would make much difference (or what else I could substitute) for the Parmesan cheese as my grandson is dairy intolerant. I have read the review and seen that coconut cream is a good substitute for double cream and can get around the butter. Suggestions would be appreciated
An aged Parmesan should not affect a dairy intolerance. That being said nutritional yeast is usually the go to for cheese substitution.
Just found this recipe and made it last night–absolutely delicious!! Sadly, I have a crew of non-spinach eaters so I had to leave that out (I would have loved it) but served it over mashed potatoes and it was a huge hit all around. The sauce is so full of flavor and the chicken was perfectly tender. I cooked it in a cast iron skillet so I could go stovetop to oven and it worked great. Thank you so much for this easy weeknight recipe!
After reading all the reviews on this recipe, I feel I’m the only one whose spinach turned an unappetizing dark brown, green when it came out of the oven! And my question is, why?
It could be because your spinach was not fresh, or had been overcooked. Spinach can get hard and too crispy if kept in the oven for too long. Maybe coat the spinach in some oil and salt and pepper in another bowl and add that in 7-10 minutes before taking the chicken out of the oven, this should do the trick! Please get back if it worked
Good! I did 4 thighs so there was a lot of juice in the pan, I decided to pour rice around the chicken and it was cooked perfectly in the 30 mins! Gotta figure out different seasoning, not crazy about thyme, overall good
We used Tarragon instead of thyme …it was awesome! Give it a try!
This should be called Chicken Crack!! This is so darn good! My husband has made it 4 times now and each time he tweaks it and it gets only BETTER! It’s great with rice but I’m going low carb so cauliflower mash or rice it is going to be tonight!! Simply the best chicken recipe. I’m so glad he was looking for new recipes and found this one!!
I made this dish for the 3rd time. This time the dish came out the best. I served it over rice & my family loved it!
Tonight was the sixth or seventh time I’ve made this dish. My ex boyfriend loves it so much that it’s a great way to get him to visit me. I never thought I could love spinach, but I could eat a pound of it in this lemon butter sauce. Mashed potatoes are our preferred side as they are perfection with the sauce. Between the sauce and the mashed potatoes, I’m pretty sure I used three sticks of butter in this dinner, but at least I got my green veggie in! Ha!
The absolute best! A monthly staple in our house. Everyone loves it
Made this today I had boneless chicken thighs, no skin. I used 1 tsp of paprika because we don’t like as much and changed the tyme to oregano because we do not like tyme. Over pasta and dinner rolls. Family wanted more. Next time I will double the liquid.
I have made so many Damn Delicious recipes and all of them are excellent. Love watching for new recipes. Wish Chunga had a regular tv program as she is beautiful and so inspiring for us cooks that have gotten tired of cooking the same things all the time. Thanks for featuring Damn Delicious.
Barbara
I made this dish four or five times, and it is always a hit.
Love it.
Perfect everytime.
Thank you so much
My husband love chicken but I was looking for a change and I came across that recipe so I made it last night … it was in saine !!! So good that my honey said is the best he ever had !!! I will definitely make it again . As we both love cheese I put a good half a cup of Parmesan instead of the 1/4 cup suggested . Was yummy
Like other reviewers on here, I adore this recipe and have made it four times. I’m writing this at 4 am with insomnia, while cheering myself up by planning to make it again tonight! I use only four thighs, but I don’t halve any of the other ingredients, and I always serve it over mashed potatoes. Heavenly!