This garlic butter chicken is perfect for a quick and easy midweek dinner. It’s rich, garlicky and only requires 4 ingredients for the sauce!
Better still it only takes 30mins to make. PLUS, I’ve got a sneaky suspicion you might have most of the ingredients on hand already Follow me…
Garlic Butter Chicken Breast
For this recipe you’ll want to use boneless skinless chicken breast. You’ll also want to butterfly the breasts right through to make 4 even sized breasts. This will not only ensure the breasts cook quicker, but also more evenly.
Room Temp
An important tip to ensure the chicken comes out nice and juicy is to make sure you don’t cook it straight from the fridge. This will cause the chicken to seize up and go chewy. Bring the chicken close to room temp before frying.
Dredge through flour
Dredging the chicken through seasoned flour is a nifty trick to ensuring the sauce sticks to the chicken. When you fry chicken that’s been dredged through flour it’ll go nice and crispy. When you pour sauce over the chicken it absorbs into the thin coating of flour on the chicken.
Process shots: mix flour, garlic powder and s&p (photo 1), coat chicken (photo 2), add to oil & butter (photo 3), fry both sides until golden (photo 4).
Pan Fried Garlic Butter Chicken
Pan frying is the best method here because you get to start the sauce with the leftover flavour from frying the chicken. First things first, let’s see what the magic 4 ingredient sauce consists of:
- Butter – You’ll want to use unsalted butter, just so you can control the level of salt in the sauce more efficiently.
- Stock – Chicken stock works best. This not only creates the base of the sauce, but it’s great to scrape off any leftover flavour stuck in the pan from frying the chicken.
- Garlic – 2 cloves is all you’ll need! Make sure they’re finely diced/minced.
- Parsley – Garlic and parsley is a classic combo. It’s also not too overpowering which ensures the garlic shines, as it should.
Can I use other herbs?
Thyme or rosemary work great. They are both more powerful than parsley though so I recommend starting off with a smaller amount and working your way up. In all cases make sure you’re using fresh herbs. Dried herbs won’t have long enough to infuse into the sauce properly.
Process shots: fry garlic (photo 1), pour in stock (photo 2), melt in butter (photo 3), whisk to emulsify butter with stock (photo 4), add parsley (photo 5), add chicken back in (photo 6).
Serving Garlic Butter Chicken
Once you’ve added the chicken back in, give it all a good baste then plate up right away. You don’t want to leave them in the pan too long or they’ll overcook.
From there I always serve up with a wedge of lemon. The sauce is quite rich, so a squeeze of lemon juice at the very end will cut through that richness. Optional, but recommended.
What to serve with Garlic Butter Chicken?
Here I serve with asparagus and Lemon Roasted Potatoes. Other sides that would pair nicely include Roasted Broccolini, Roasted Baby Potatoes or Mustard Mash.
And there we have it! All my top tips for the perfect garlic butter chicken.
For the sister recipes to this check out my Garlic Butter Pork Chops, Garlic Butter Cod and Garlic Butter Salmon!
For more garlicky goodness check out these beauties too:
Delicious Garlic Recipes
- Garlic Butter Potato Skins
- Honey Garlic Chicken
- Garlic Green Beans
- Roasted Garlic Bread
- Creamy Garlic Chicken
- Garlic Parmesan Chicken Skewers
Alrighty, let’s tuck into the full recipe for this butter garlic chicken shall we?!
How to make Garlic Butter Chicken (Full Recipe & Video)
Garlic Butter Chicken
Equipment
- Large Frying Pan & Wooden Spoon
- Shallow Dish (for dredging)
- Sharp Knife & Chopping Board
- Jug (for stock)
- Tongs
Ingredients
- 2x 9oz/250g Chicken Breasts, brought close to room temp
- 1/4 cup / 40g Plain / All Purpose Flour
- 1/2 cup / 120ml Chicken Stock
- 6 tbsp / 90g / 3.2oz Unsalted Butter, divided into tbsp chunks (see notes)
- 2 cloves of Garlic, minced/finely diced
- 1 tbsp finely diced Fresh Parsley
- 1 tbsp Olive Oil
- 1 tsp Garlic Powder
- 1 tsp Salt, plus more to taste
- 1/2 tsp Black Pepper, plus more to taste
- 1 Lemon, divided into 4 wedges (to serve)
Instructions
- In a shallow dish, combine 1/4 cup flour with 1 tsp garlic powder & salt and 1/2 tsp black pepper.
- Butterfly your chicken breasts right through the centre to make 4 even sized breasts. One by one dredge in the flour (press in the flour to get an even coverage), give them a shake then place to one side.
- Add 1 tbsp butter and 1 tbsp olive oil to a large pan over medium-high heat. When hot, add in the chicken breasts and fry until golden on each side and white/piping hot through the centre. Approx 3-5mins each side depending on thickness. Place to one side.
- Turn heat down to a medium and add garlic. Fry for 1-2mins until it just begins to brown, then pour in stock. Use your wooden spoon to scrape off any flavour stuck to the pan, then add in your remaining 5 tbsp butter. Swiftly whisk as it melts to bind with the stock, it should turn slightly cloudy. Sprinkle in parsley and season to taste with salt & black pepper.
- Allow to simmer for a few mins until it starts to thicken, then turn down the heat to low and add the chicken back in. Spoon over the sauce then serve up with extra sauce drizzled over and a squeeze of lemon juice to taste (optional - see notes).
Video
Notes
Your Private Notes:
Nutrition
Looking for more?
You’ll find plenty more delicious comfort food like this in my Debut Cookbook ‘Comfy’
For another garlic butter chicken recipe check out my Garlic Butter Chicken Orzo!
For more similar recipes check out these beauties:
Chicken Breast Recipes
- Creamy Bacon Chicken
- Creamy Tarragon Chicken
- Creamy Roasted Red Pepper Chicken
- Creamy Tomato Chicken
- Chicken Marsala
- Chicken Francese
We made it, it might honestly be my favorite chicken ever – and I grew up where restaurants run out of chicken.
It’s also my daughter’s (6) new favorite.
It was good enough for me to leave a comment and deal with all the new spam emails. Very good.
Though, I would have made extra sauce, as we put it on noodles and had barely any left to cover the noodles.
Thanks so much for the review, Brian! Don’t worry, no spammy emails coming your way (or any emails at all for that matter). It’s just needed to leave a comment 🙂 C.
WOW!! This garlic butter chicken dish is so good!!
Thanks so much for the review, Laurie! 🙂 C.
Omw I made this tonight and was blown away. I’ve recently had my top teeth take out and getting used to dentures is hard but made this and the chicken was so soft and juicy I could have eaten more. What I like as well is that it’s not cost much and I managed to do 3 chicken breasts cut in half with the sauce, just needed to add a tad more oil to fry the chickens
So pleased this went down well, Marie! Thanks so much for the review 🙂 C.
Such a simple recipe, but soooooo good! I just made this a few nights ago and it was very well received, even by a notoriously picky eater. I followed the recipe fairly closely, but did do more minced garlic, added a bit of thyme and made double the amount of sauce. I really think the thinner sliced chicken breasts, being close to room temp ( and then blotted with paper towel) prior to dredging in flour, made a big difference… that and using fresh garlic and parsley. I was surprised how yummy this turned out with only a few basic ingredients and about 25 minutes. It was a bit hit; I was told, “ this is literally the best chicken I have ever had” and that it was “fancy restaurant quality!” It was even super good the next day..Definitely keeping this recipe on hand! Highly recommend!!
Thanks so much for the lovely review, Karly! Glad the recipe went down well 🙂 C.
can you use the chicken juice
Not 100% sure what you mean by ‘chicken juice’ Michael? C.
I made this today and everyone loved it. I didn’t have fresh parsley and used dried parsley. It didn’t matter and we all were happy.
So pleased to hear! 🙂 C.