Bake your chicken breasts using this cold oven cooking method to yield perfectly juicy, tender chicken breasts quickly and easily, no preheating required.
For such a simple food, chicken can get downright complicated, a problem due entirely to the 1.7 million ways to prepare it. Having been a semi-professional, and now a professional home cook, I have tried approximately 1 million of those chicken cooking methods, and of them, none have ever yielded the most reliably perfect plain chicken breasts as this “cold oven method.”
“So what is the cold oven method,” you may ask. Well friends, it all starts with a cold oven. Then, with no prior notice, no preheating what-so-ever, you shove pans of seasoned chicken breasts into the oven, crank on the heat to 450 and let ‘er ride for about 25 minutes.
The results are perfectly cooked, juicy chicken ready to slice and dice for meal prep or serve for dinner. Voila!
I like to load up two baker’s half sheets (big aluminum baking sheets) full of chicken breasts when I do this to really maximize output in the kitchen. What we don’t eat for dinner can be used for other meals throughout the week or frozen too.
You can season these chix however you please, even doing a few Herbs de Provence on this pan and some Spicy Creole on that one. Paralyzed by indecision? Sprinkle with salt and freshly ground pepper and save the tough decisions for another part of the meal.
So what do you do with all of this perfectly cooked chicken now that you’ve got it safely resting on your counters? Certainly you can serve the breasts straight away in their full majesty for dinner along with some classic sides like mashed potatoes, rice, broccoli, carrots, salad, and so on.
Or you can slice or dice and add to one of the zillion recipes that call for pre-cooked or rotisserie chicken. Check out my Curried Chicken Divan, or this amazing Cheesy Corn Casserole (with optional chicken addition of course!). Try the chicken in cheesy quesadillas or make chicken burritos. Top almost any salad with chicken for a leaner meal (and then top that with French fries and ranch to offset it).
There’s my Santa Fe Salad with Cilantro Lime Vinaigrette if you have some extra time. Or this Impossibly Easy Chopped Chinese Chicken Salad if you have no time at all.
Chicken tortilla soup, chicken chili, chicken casseroles, chicken tacos, chicken sandwiches (oooohhh, like a mock Arby’s Pecan Chicken Salad Sandwich!!!). There are so. many. ways. to use precooked chicken, so I know you’ll find something.
Or just serve it for dinner and leave it at that.
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Bake your chicken breasts using this cold oven cooking method to yield perfectly juicy, tender chicken breasts quickly and easily, no preheating required.
Ingredients
- 6–8 ounce skinless, boneless chicken breasts*
- Olive oil
- Seasonings
Instructions
- Place chicken breasts on a large rimmed baking sheet, and drizzle with oil and toss to evenly coat top and bottom.
- Sprinkle with seasonings of your choice to lightly coat chicken breasts.
- Put the pan in the oven and then turn the oven on to 450 degrees.
- Bake chicken for 25 to 30 minutes or until a thermometer inserted into the middle reads somewhere around 160 degrees (temp will continue to rise to 165 after removing from oven).
Notes
If your local market sells monstrously large chicken breasts, you’re not alone. I take the larger ones and butterfly them or simply slice them in half.
Keywords: baked chicken breasts
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