One-Pan Chicken and Broccoli with Cheese

This one-pan chicken recipe has ever-healthy broccoli topped with crunchy cheddar bread crumbs. You get to indulge and feel good about it at the same time!

Today’s recipe is for a big pan of chicken thighs topped with broccoli and cheddary breadcrumbs. It’s somewhere between healthy and indulgent and is just plain delicious. Even better than that, it’s super-easy to make because you just throw everything in the pan and bake it.

One-Pan Meals

This is seriously my favorite way to make dinner. The flavors mix together while everything gets browned and delicious and you get to relax and then eat. It’s such a great way of cooking dinner that two of the most popular recipes on my site are made this way:

Chicken with Tomatoes, Basil, and Chilies. I’m telling you, this one is so easy to make but it’s so delicious that I make it for company all the time. And, Chicken with Butternut Squash and Sage. The flavors are really unbelievable with so little work. Peeling and chopping the squash is the most time-consuming part.

Broccoli And Cheese = Great Combo

Today’s one-pan chicken dinner was a result of me experimenting to make a really quick Broccoli and Cheese Soup (this one). Let’s just say we had a lot of broccoli and cheddar in the house. We were all a bit tired of the soup though so I needed to make something else for dinner. I turned to my frequent “throw it all in a pan and cook it” method and this recipe was born.

You put skinless chicken thighs (bone-in or boneless) in a big pan. Sprinkle them with salt, pepper, and thyme. Arrange the broccoli florets around the chicken and then top the broccoli with an easy cheddar and breadcrumb mixture.

Bake. Wait. Eat. Mmmmmmm!

And now here’s my easy one-pan chicken and broccoli recipe:

One-Pan Chicken and Broccoli with Cheese

• Author: Christine Pittman
• Prep Time: 10 minutes
• Cook Time: 40 minutes
• Total Time: 50 minutes
• Yield: 4 servings 1x
• Category: Entrée
• Method: Baked
• Cuisine: American

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DESCRIPTION

This one-pan chicken recipe has ever-healthy broccoli topped with crunchy cheddar bread crumbs. You get to indulge and feel good about it at the same time!

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Ingredients

Scale 1x2x3x

• 8 skinless chicken thighs*
• ½ tsp. salt
• ¼ tsp. black pepper
• ½ tsp. dried thyme
• 1 and ½ pound head of broccoli
• ½ cup panko breadcrumbs
• 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
• 2 Tbsp. olive oil

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. Lightly oil a large skillet or rimmed baking dish. Arrange the chicken thighs in the skillet in a single layer.
3. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and thyme.
4. Break the florets off of the broccoli. If you’d like, peel and chop the stalks to include them also (learn how here). Arrange broccoli around chicken pieces.
5. In a medium bowl toss together the bread crumbs, cheddar, olive oil, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon coarse pepper.
6. Arrange bread crumb mixture over the broccoli in the pan. It’s ok if some gets on the chicken but concentrate on the broccoli.
7. Bake until chicken is cooked through to 165°F on an instant-read thermometer, 40-50 minutes.

Notes

*You can use either boneless or bone-in chicken thighs with this. The recipe originally called for bone-in but I have since tested it with both and they both work.

This post originally appeared in January 2015. It was revised and republished in September 2018