This Rosemary Garlic Chicken Breast recipe is healthy, delicious, and full of flavor. It’s marinated with minced garlic, fresh lemon, and rosemary.
Chicken with garlic and rosemary is a perfect grilled chicken recipe and works great for a BBQ with friends or just a simple weekday meal. You can serve with just about any of your favorite side dishes, or use leftovers to top salads, pizzas, and more.
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Easy Rosemary Garlic Chicken Recipe
If you love the flavor combination of garlic and rosemary, this Rosemary Marinated chicken recipe is for you. The easy marinade is full of lemon juice, fresh rosemary, minced garlic and simple seasoning that adds great flavor while also making the chicken super juicy.
It's best if you use fresh rosemary but dried rosemary will do in a pinch. Just be sure to mince the rosemary into very small pieces so the flavors can infuse into your chicken marinade and you don't have any large, woody chunks of rosemary.
Rosemary Chicken Marinade Ingredients
- Chicken: Use chicken breasts that have an even thickness, about ¾" thick. If your chicken breast is a little thicker than that, place the chicken breast between two sheets of plastic wrap. Using the flat side of a meat tenderizer, pound the thick part of the chicken breast and even it out. This will ensure your chicken breast cooks evenly.
- Garlic: You can slice fresh garlic cloves for the garlic marinade for chicken or use the pre-minced garlic you buy in the produce section. Both work great for this recipe.
- Lemon Juice: Fresh lemon juice is best but from a bottle works in a pinch too. You can also use fresh lime juice for a fun variation.
- Rosemary: Fresh rosemary is the best for this rosemary chicken marinade recipe.
- Salt and Pepper: Add both to the marinade
- Dijon Mustard: You only need a little for this recipe. It doesn't overpower the light rosemary and garlic flavors it just adds a little depth of flavor.
- Oil: I like to use Avocado Oil in marinade recipes. It's light and doesn't add extra flavor. You can also use olive oil for this recipe or any vegetable oil of your choice.
How to Make Grilled Rosemary Marinated Chicken
- Tenderize the chicken. Place chicken breasts between two sheets of plastic wrap and pound with a meat tenderizer or mason jar to flatten the chicken and create an even thickness throughout the entire breast.
- Marinate the chicken. In a gallon size freezer bag, add the tenderized chicken, avocado oil, lemon juice, minced garlic, finely minced rosemary, Dijon mustard, salt, and pepper. Seal the bag and roll the chicken breast and the marinade around until the marinade is all mixed together and covering all of the chicken. Place in the fridge to marinade for at least 2 hours or overnight.
- Grill the chicken. Preheat grill to about 325 degrees F. Remove the chicken from the marinade and place on a hot grill. Grill the chicken on medium heat for about 15-20 minutes, or until the internal temp of the chicken reaches 165 degrees. Be sure to flip the chicken once the first side becomes lightly charred.
- Serve. Remove chicken from the grill and let it rest for about 5 minutes before serving. Enjoy!
Frequently Asked Questions
There are so many great side dishes to serve with rosemary chicken. I personally love the following:
Lime Rice
Green Beans
Garlic Parmesan Mashed Potatoes
Twice Baked Potatoes
You want to marinate your chicken breasts for a minimum of 2 hours to allow the marinade to penetrate and flavor the chicken. However, you can leave the chicken in the marinade for up to 24 hours or overnight.
Garlic Rosemary Chicken Breast Recipe
Ingredients
- 2-4 large Chicken Breasts
- 2 Tablespoons Avocado Oil
- 2 Tablespoons Lemon Juice
- 2 Tablespoons Garlic minced
- 1 Tablespoon Fresh Rosemary minced
- 1 teaspoon Dijon Mustard
- 1 teaspoon Salt
- ½ teaspoon Pepper
Instructions
- Place chicken breasts between two sheets of plastic wrap and pound with a meat tenderizer or mason jar to flatten the chicken and create an even thickness throughout the entire breast.
- In a gallon size freezer bag, add the tenderized chicken, avocado oil, lemon juice, minced garlic, finely minced rosemary, Dijon mustard, salt, and pepper.
- Seal the bag and roll the chicken breast and the marinade around until the marinade is all mixed together and covering all of the chicken. Place in the fridge to marinade for at least 2 hours or overnight.
Grilling the Rosemary Chicken
- Preheat grill to about 325 degrees F.
- Remove the chicken from the marinade and place on a hot grill. Grill the chicken on medium heat for about 15-20 minutes, or until the internal temp of the chicken reaches 165 degrees. Be sure to flip the chicken once the first side becomes lightly charred.
- Remove chicken from the grill and let it rest for about 5 minutes before serving. Enjoy!
DAVID & JOANNE
Tried your garlic parmesan chicken breast today. Not chicken lovers are we but ........ we were blown away by the results. We didn't know what to expect so we were prepared to be disappointed, A pretty simple recipe for a "seat of the pants", throw it together cook. Joanne is more of a stick to the plan cook but I,m a bad combination of innovative and impatient. Well this time it was easy to stick with the recipe and boy am I glad. Thank you so much. I would only suggest that care is given to the keeping equal size/thickness of the two breasts. I didn't because I had thawed two prior to selecting a recipe. It certainly makes a difference when grilling to a specific temperature. This resulted in opening the closed grill repeatedly to be sure the larger piece was 165. Each temp check lowered the chamber's temperature. Duh! Certainly planning to try more of your recipes. Thanks!
Jill Baird
Your comment made my day! So happy you loved the recipe. Great tip for the chicken breast thickness. I'll add that to the tips and tricks!