Today, I’m sharing with you this delicious recipe for Baked Chicken With Broccoli And Cheese. Getting your kids to eat broccoli is not easy, but keeping them coming back for more is even tougher. To solve that problem, I decided to pair my broccoli with cheese and butter. The kids already love cheese, so it shouldn’t be hard to get them to eat the broccoli too. Give it a try, and let me know how it works for you.
Cheesy Chicken Broccoli Bake
Ingredients
for 3 servings
- 1 cup long grain rice(200 g)
- ¼ teaspoon black pepper
- ½ teaspoon onion powder
- 1 can cream of chicken
- 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese(100 g)
- 2 cups broccoli(300 g), diced
- 1 ½ cups chicken broth(360 mL)
- cheddar cheese, for topping
Nutrition Info
View Info
Preparation
- Heat oven to 375°F (190°C).
- In a casserole dish, combine rice, pepper, onion powder, cream of chicken, cheese, broccoli, and chicken stock. Mix until everything is combined.
- Lay chicken on top of the rice mixture. Space evenly.
- Cover with foil and bake for 50 minutes.
- Take off cover and top the chicken with more cheese. Bake uncovered for another 5 minutes or until cheese is melted.
- Enjoy!
Broccoli Cheese Chicken Bake Recipe {Easy Dinner Idea}
With just 4 ingredients, this broccoli cheese chicken bake recipe brings all the delicious flavor of comfort food into a dinner that is almost too easy to make on a busy weeknight!
If you can’t tell by all of my previous easy chicken bake recipes, this meal has become the go to dinner for busy week nights in our home. They are great because you can throw them together in minutes, they are a super hearty dinner filled with wholesome white meat chicken and packed with veggies, and they bring together some of our favorite flavor combos in a super easy package.
One of the popular questions I get about my blog is where I get my recipes. I find inspiration all over, but the real answer is that I mostly make them up by taking flavors my family loves, and foods my kids will eat and package it together in a recipe that is easy enough for me to make when I am short on time and have three kids begging for attention. The chicken bake recipes are a pretty simple formula: chicken + themed seasonings + veggies + cheese = delicious balanced meal in minutes. Since I know my family loves it and all my kids will eat it, I look for new flavors or seasonings that we love and adapt them to fit my formula.
One flavor combo that has been on my to make list for quite some time is broccoli cheese. I knew this would be a big hit because it is super kid friendly and one of my husband’s favorites. I was a little stuck though because making a cheese sauce would make the recipe a little too time intensive for a busy weeknight, so the idea has just been sitting at the back of my mind waiting for an epiphany.
Then I saw this Campbell’s Oven Sauce in Cheesy Broccoli and BOOM! It was done! This was the missing piece of the puzzle for the dish I had been wanting to create and gave me just the help I needed to be able to make it super simple for a busy weeknight.
Campbell’s new products comes in varieties for Slow Cooker, Skillet, Oven and Grill Sauces and all sorts of flavors, which can make dinner a breeze whatever way you want to cook or are craving to eat.
When I promise quick, this dish won’t disappoint. It will be prepped and to the oven in about 10 minutes, or maybe even less!
Ingredients:
- Chicken Breast
- Campbell’s Oven Sauce: Cheesy Broccoli Chicken
- Frozen Broccoli Florettes
- Cheddar Cheese
UPDATE: I have questions for those that can’t find the sauce about a substitute. I tried this recipe this past weekend using 2 cans of Condensed Campbell’s Broccoli Cheese Soup and it turned out great! Just replace the oven sauce in the recipe with the condensed broccoli cheese soup (do not dilute) and you should be in business!
Grab your baking dish. I use a 2 qt pyrex because it fits 3 chicken breasts perfectly. Place your chicken breasts flat on the bottom of the dish. Put the frozen broccoli florets on top of the chicken and then spread the Campbell’s Cheesy Broccoli Sauce over the top of the broccoli evenly. Sprinkle the cheddar cheese on top of the dish and it is ready to go in the oven. Bake at 400F for 45-60 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through, and you have a hot, fresh family meal ready to go! As promised… couldn’t be easier and you will be head over heels for the creamy, cheesy goodness.
Note: I cook mine on the lower middle rack and have not needed to cover it, however each oven varies in size and true temperature, so keep an eye on it and if it gets to where you don’t want it to continue to brown, loosely cover with a piece of foil for the remainder of the cook time.
I have talked a lot about how easy this dish is, but let’s break from that for a minute and talk about how crazy delicious it is. The Campbell’s cheddar sauce was perfection. It is thick enough to make the dish come together perfectly and the sharp cheddar flavor is just the cheesy goodness my family loves. My kids devoured the nutrient rich broccoli when it is coated in the amazingly tasty cheese sauce without a second thought. That my friends is a win.
We served this on top of rice, but if you wanted to go lighter it would also be delicious on a bed of sautéed spinach. You can even use the leftovers chopped up and put with some romaine into a wrap. YUM! It is a pretty versatile meal and perfect to be reinvented into some new dishes for even easier lunches or dinners to serve throughout the week.
One-Pan Chicken and Broccoli with Cheese
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
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 40 minutes
- Yield: 4 servings 1x
- Category: Entrée
- Method: Baked
- Cuisine: American
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!
INGREDIENTS
- 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
- Preheat oven to 350°F.
- Lightly oil a large skillet or rimmed baking dish. Arrange the chicken thighs in the skillet in a single layer.
- Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and thyme.
- 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.
- In a medium bowl toss together the bread crumbs, cheddar, olive oil, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon coarse pepper.
- Arrange bread crumb mixture over the broccoli in the pan. It’s ok if some gets on the chicken but concentrate on the broccoli.
- 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.