Lemon-Herb Chicken Breasts

One of the recurring themes of this blog and, by extension, our meal planning, is finding recipes that are simple and call for just a few ingredients. These are the types of recipes that we find great for the mid-week.

So this week we started with Lemon-Herb Chicken Breasts, a recipe we found from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The recipe is simple since it calls for just a few ingredients, including a lot of herbs we have on hand. Also, the prep work is making the lemon-herb marinade and letting the chicken soak in it.

We tweaked the amounts in the recipe based on our attempt at it. The printed recipe called for 3 pounds of chicken breasts; we went with just 1 pound.

Lemon-Herb Chicken Breasts

1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breast halves
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 clove garlic, chopped
1/2 lemon, juiced and grated
1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary
1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme
1 teaspoon coarse salt
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper

First combine the olive oil, garlic, lemon juice and zest, rosemary, thyme, salt and black pepper; mix well. Pour that mixture in a dish.

Take chicken and rinse well under cold water. Then place chicken in marinade and flip a few times to make sure each side is coated. Then refrigerate for 4 to 8 hours.


Take chicken and grill. We grilled the chicken inside over a grill on top of burners.


We served the chicken breasts on a bed of couscous with some peas.


When we made the recipe, we forgot to divide by one-third, so we made excess marinade. We also left the chicken in overnight. The chicken was marinated, but a bit too well. For me, the lemon flavor dominated and it was tough to taste any of the herbs. But the chicken was grilled well and was moist when it was served.