Recipes with chicken breast

A JUICY Baked Chicken Breast!
Though I always stand firm that brown meat is better than white – more flavour, more juiciness – lean chicken breast is a regular in my shopping trolley, week after week.
So today, I’m sharing my recipe for how I make Oven Baked Chicken Breast.
“We can never have too many really great quick chicken breast recipes!”
As simple as it sounds, if you wack a seasoned breast in the oven without thought, the chances are you’ll be chewing your way through dry chicken, furiously squirting over copious amounts of ketchup to try to salvage it.
It doesn’t need to be that way. Enter – a fabulous simple, magic chicken seasoning for baked chicken breast:

The Chicken Breast Seasoning

Made with just brown sugar, paprika, oregano, garlic powder, salt and pepper, the secret ingredient in this is brown sugar:

1. Makes more seasoning, so you can coat the breast thoroughly and give it a beautiful crust without overpowering it with lots of spices that need longer to cook than chicken breast does; and
2. Makes it juicy – the chicken sweat while it bakes, so you end up with wetness that makes the chicken more juicy than the usual baked chicken breast.

Yes it adds sweetness but don’t worry, this baked chicken breast is still savoury!

How long to cook chicken breast

A medium chicken breast will take 18 – 20 minutes to bake at 220C / 425F. Cooking it hard and fast at a high temperature is the secret to gorgeous caramelisation and ultra juicy chicken inside. No dried out breast around here!!
The seasoning for this chicken is actually a really great indicator for when the chicken is cooked to perfection. Basically, once the surface of the chicken is caramelised, it’s cooked to perfection inside so get it out of the oven!
My last tip for a truly great Baked Chicken Breast is to pound it to even thickness, either with a rolling pin, meat mallet or even with your fist (very therapeutic). This has the double effect of even cooking as well as tenderising the meat.