What’s Cookin’ – Lemon Pepper Chicken

When lemon pepper seasoning came out in the 80s, it was an instant hit with home cooks.  Lemon and pepper have been used together for centuries especially in Middle Eastern and the Far Eastern cooking.  But Americans embraced lemon pepper seasoning like they were the first ones to ever use these two ingredients together.  We used it so much that we eventually burned out on it, and used it less and less.

I’m here to tell you to give it another try!  I make a baked Lemon Pepper Chicken that is quick and easy.  It is one of my go-to weeknight dinners.  The chicken is really more steamed than baked so it comes out very tender.  You can cut it with a fork.  I think that is one of the reasons that the kids really liked it when they were younger.  It was easy to cut and eat.

And it’s really easy to adjust the servings depending on how many people you need to feed.  Just make one breast for each serving.  The recipe is for two, but easily adjusted for as many as you need to prepare.

Lemon Pepper Chicken ingredients.

The beauty of this recipe is that you can make as many or as few chicken breasts as you need.  Oh, and if lemons are too expensive, feel free to use the ReaLemon lemon juice.

Place the chicken breasts into a pan that has been coated with cooking spray.

Sprinkle with  lemon pepper seasoning, 1 TB of butter and 2 TB of lemon juice on each breast.

I had some aluminum foil wrappers and decided to try baking one of the breasts in one.  This would be a great idea if you only want to cook one or two and don’t want to wash a pan!

Here’s the breast in the foil wrapper ready to bake.

Here are the rest of the breasts in the pan covered tightly with aluminum foil.

Here is the breast cooked in the foil liner.  Looks great!  And the ones cooked in the pan looked great, too.  Notice the lovely juices?

This chicken is tender and juicy.

Yummy.