This Garlic-Fennel-Rosemary Chicken will make you fall in love with fennel, rosemary, and garlic! This topping gives a perfect Mediterranean flavor and light crunch to chicken breasts, while keeping them moist during baking.
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My husband said this was the best chicken I’d ever made! It’s always great to hear that about a recipe that’s so easy to put together.
The only planning ahead needed is to get your fresh herbs when you buy your chicken. If you know someone with a rosemary bush, get to be better friends with her or him!
If you have a mini-food-processor you can use it to chop all the ingredients together. However, the quantity of the paste is so small that it misses most of the fennel seeds. If you don’t mind that (and it works fine that way) then this is the quickest way to prep the paste.
If not, you can do as I do. I just chop the garlic, rosemary, fennel seed and parsley together on a board. Then stir your garlic-herb paste into the oil and add the fennel powder to form the topping.
Add your salt and pepper and you’re ready to smoosh it on top of your chicken and bake!
Enjoy, and let me know what you thought in the comments!
Beth
Other great baked dinners on A Meal In Mind
Bacon-wrapped garlic-herb pork tenderloin
Tuscan chicken with spinach, tomatoes and artichokes
Roasted Shrimp with Broccoli and Cherry Tomatoes
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Easy Baked Garlic-Fennel-Rosemary Chicken
Ingredients
- 4-5 cloves garlic peeled
- 2-3 tablespoons rosemary
- 1 tablespoon fennel seeds
- 2 tablespoons parsley
- 1 teaspoon ground fennel up to 1 tablespoon if you like fennel as we do
- ½ teaspoon ground black pepper
- ¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper optional
- 1 teaspoon salt optional if eating low-salt
- 3 to 4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 to 1½ pounds chicken breasts 2 or 3 pieces
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
- Use your mini-food processor to chop the garlic, rosemary, fennel seed and parsley OR use the hand-chopping method shown.
- Transfer the chopped ingredients to a small bowl and add the fennel powder, pepper and salt.
- Stir in the oil.
- Use a flexible spatula to pat the paste evenly onto the surface of each chicken breast.
- Bake for 20-25 minutes (20 at sea level, 25 at high altitude) or until a meat thermometer inserted at the thickest part of the breast reads 165 F.
- Serve with roasted Yukon gold potatoes and a favorite vegetable such as these roasted beets and rutabagas.
Notes
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Jocelyn
This recipe gives a beautiful and uncommon flavor to chicken and it stays moist as Beth described. My only clarification would be that if you are using Costco chicken breasts, sometimes they are very thick. I found that 22 mins was not long enough for those pieces and I had to stick them back in.
Beth
I so appreciate constructive feedback like this on my recipes. If I do try it with the Costco chicken, which I should, I'll use a meat thermometer to check the doneness. Thanks for the comment on the flavor - I quite agree!
Catherine
I think we will try this for dinner. We grow fennel, garlic and parsley in our gardens and I'm always looking for new recipes that use our home grown veggies and herbs. Thanks for sharing, Cathrine
Beth
Hello Catherine, I have gotten very good feedback about this recipe but as you see from another comment, be sure to consider how large your chicken pieces are when setting the bake time - it seems that adding 5 or 10 minutes is what people are finding. I plan to make an edit to the recipe to reflect this. How wonderful to have all those herbs in your gardens!
Peter
This is gives chicken an outstanding flavor. My wife and I will definitely end up making this recipe again. We used a coffee mill to blitz the fennel seeds so that they wouldn't get stuck in teeth. We also didn't have ground fennel, but there was still plenty of flavor. Next time we may decrease the amount of salt to satisfy our tastes. Thanks for the amazing recipe!
Beth
I'm so glad you enjoyed this recipe, and thanks for sharing the details of how you made it. It certainly made me appreciate fennel! And we have been reducing the amount of salt we add to recipes, too.
Brian
Only had chicken drumsicks. Used a bit more fennel, garlic, rosemary and butter. Plus another 20 minutes of cook time. Really good!
Beth
Hi, Brian, thanks for sharing the changes you made - I'm always tempted to add more garlic to any dish! It's especially helpful to know of the change in cook time with drumsticks, which I haven't tried.