This 30-minute chicken dinner is packed with flavor — and healthy ingredients!

Use kale, spinach, baby spinach or mustard greens. Anything works.

Serve it over a bed of spaghetti and you’ll have a dinner everyone asks to make on repeat.

Yes, cook the herbs first.

I use boneless, skinless chicken thighs because they’re full of flavor and the perfect serving size for a family. The only problem is the look! It’s hard to make chicken thighs look pretty. You’ll see that I sprinkle the herbs into the pan BEFORE adding the chicken. It cooks right into the chicken thighs and gives more color.

You’ll need a platter.

There’s a bunch of taking the chicken out, moving the lemons out, putting it all back in. It’s the only way to cook everything evenly. I have a whole bunch of plain, white platters and use them for this kind of thing: to rest the chicken and lemons on. Then I rinse it off to serve the whole chicken dinner. Talk about showing off your efforts. This simple move never fails to impress the littles.

30-Minute Lemon Chicken with Tomatoes & Kale

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Use whatever greens you have. Kale, spinach, mustard greens. Anything will work.

Pour the whole pan over a bed of spaghetti and dust with parmesan cheese.

Author: Charity Curley Mathews l foodlets.com

Ingredients

Scale

1 1/2 pounds boneless chicken thighs (about 8)

Zest and juice of one lemon

Salt and pepper

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon dried herbs (thyme, basil, oregano or Italian blend)

3 tablespoons butter

1 lemon, thinly sliced

1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes

4 garlic cloves (diced or smashed)

1/2 cup white wine

4 cups greens cut into big pieces (spinach, baby spinach, kale or mustard greens with stems removed)

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Instructions

Start the spaghetti: Put a large pot of water on high heat to boil. If you do this now, the timing will be perfect. Carry on with the chicken in the meantime. When your water comes to a boil, cook spaghetti according to package directions, in between working with the chicken.
Start the chicken: Squeeze lemon juice over the top of chicken breasts. Then grate the zest over that. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Heat a large saute pan with olive oil on medium-high heat. Allow the oil to get quite hot (enough that it sizzles if you add a drop of water) so your chicken doesn’t stick to the bottom. Add herbs to the pan. Place chicken in pan and cook about 5 minutes on each side. It should be seared on the edges plus the herbs will give it lots of color. (Skinless chicken isn’t always easy to make look good so this is a trick!)
Remove chicken from pan. Place it on a big platter. You’ll use this platter later to serve the whole dish.
Add lemons and fry about 1 minute on each side. Remove lemons and place with chicken.
Turn heat to medium-low. Add butter.
Cook tomatoes and garlic in the butter, stirring until the tomatoes start to wilt. About 2 minutes.
Add wine and greens. Scrape the bottom of the pan to remove all the juicy brown bits.
Add chicken back to pan and allow to cook together about 10 more minutes.
Serve over spaghetti with a sprinkle of parmesan.