We eat a lot of chicken in our house, which I feel like it kind of the norm for most households. Chicken is like the universal protein; most people like it, you can do about a million things to it, and it’s pretty affordable for any budget.
The problem is; it has almost zero flavor on it’s own, so you really have to infuse the meat and add flavor and sauces/gravy to get it absolutely succulent and delicious. Since we make chicken, usually, at least once per week here, I’m always looking for new ways to impart flavor to make it even better.
Don’t get me wrong, we do love chicken here that’s served simply with lemon butter, but sometimes we want something bolder, and this Pesto Chicken definitely fits the bill.
This chicken is my spin on a recipe/EZ Meal I found at Wegmans (because I’m sure you’re all surprised given my immense love of Wegmans). While their original recipe looked delicious on it’s own, I knew a couple of changes were going to need to be made for how we eat chicken here.
For one, we live in an apartment and don’t have a grill, so we had to improvise and roast the chicken in the oven. So, while you don’t get the smokiness of the grill, you still get a really good flavor from searing it in a cast-iron pan then finishing it off in the oven.
Also, we’re not big chicken breast people (as the original recipe called for); we usually prefer thighs. They have more flavor than the breasts and are usually juicier. I also added some chicken stock to give a bit more sauce to the chicken, especially since it was being roasted in the oven. We love when there is a good sauce to chicken that we can spoon over top as it’s being served. I also played around with the ingredient amounts and added a couple of things that are sort of our pre-requisite’s for chicken.