Baked Chicken Caprese

I don’t know why I haven’t been making this Baked Chicken Caprese all my life. Have you ever had a mozzarella Caprese salad? Mozzarella cheese, tomatoes, basil, and balsamic vinegar – or olive oil. Easy peasy. Delicious. For this baked chicken Caprese, you are going to use almost the exact same ingredients – but you are going to put them over chicken.

This recipe isn’t really a recipe. Get yourself some chicken breasts, cut them in half and layer them with basil, mozzarella, and tomatoes. Bake. So easy. So good! For this version, I added some extra basil in the form of pesto and put that directly on each piece of chicken before I added the mozzarella, tomatoes, and basil leaves.

I love to grow my own herbs. Basil is very hard to kill so I always have a big pot of that outside my back door. Mint is another favorite because – mojitos – of course. Other easy herbs to grow are parsley and cilantro, and chives. I find that basil, parsley, cilantro, and chives are my most commonly used herbs in my cooking. I try to grow a few other herbs but I seem to forget what I am growing and never use them. BUT they do look pretty, so that’s a plus!

This is my absolute favorite lunch – tomatoes and basil from my garden, mozzarella from the grocery store or the farmers market – and, if I am lucky, some fancy olive oil. YUM.

This easy weeknight dinner will taste like you put a lot of effort into it – I will never tell your secret. It is basically as easy as the caprese salad pictured right above this.

Baked Chicken Caprese goes really well with roasted potatoes (another recipe here).  For these easy roasted potatoes, I cut some red potatoes into small pieces and toss them with olive oil, salt, Italian herbs, long stems of rosemary, and bake in a greased 9 x 12 pan for about 45 minutes to an hour at 400 degrees – flipping once or twice with a spatula.

Bake your potatoes first, add your chicken about halfway through the cooking time. Serve together! Enjoy!

5 from 1 vote

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Baked Chicken Caprese

Take the awesome ingredients from a tomato mozzarella caprese salad, and put them on chicken. So good! This baked chicken caprese dinner will become a fave.

Course Dinner

Cuisine American, Italian

Keyword chicken, easy dinners

Prep Time 10 minutes

Cook Time 30 minutes

Total Time 40 minutes

Servings 6 people

Calories 275 kcal

Author Erin Brighton

Ingredients

• 3 chicken breasts split
• 3 T pesto
• 1 tomato sliced
• 8 oz mozzarella sliced
• 1/4 c basil thinly sliced in ribbons
• 2 T balsamic vinegar

Instructions

1. Split chicken breasts. If you want thinner cutlets, split them again.

2. Layer chicken breasts in the bottom of a 9x12 baking dish.

3. Spread pesto over each chicken breast.

4. Layer mozzarella, tomato, and basil over the top of the chicken breasts. Drizzle with a little balsamic vinegar.

5. Bake at 400 for about 30 minutes.