Garlic Butter Tomato Baked Chicken with Mozzarella
The easiest garlic butter tomato baked chicken with mozzarella. It’s a one-pan recipe that comes complete with roasted sweet balsamic tomatoes, cooked chicken with melty mozzarella, and the most fantastic sauce for your quinoa, rice, pasta, or veggies!
Tomato Baked Chicken.
We’ve got a garlic – balsamic – butter tomato situation we need to discuss. It’s a little out of control at the moment because we’re not even in peak tomato season yet and I can’t stop, won’t stop with this tomato baked chicken recipe. And yes, this is just the first of many tomato basil balsamic sauces I’ll be making. And that brings to me to a critical point I’d like to discuss; it’s not actually a sauce. But more like tomato pan gravy?
Let me explain.
It is the most delicious pan sauce slash an entire serving of veggies that would be beautiful if you were to say, mop it all up with a hunk of crusty bread? There’s also quick baked chicken breasts and tons of melty mozzarella cheese to finish the whole thing off. As if those aren’t reasons enough on their own to give this recipe a go, here’s a little more music to your ears –
You only have to clean ONE dish.
Tomato Baked Chicken Video:
This tomato baked chicken recipe is the kind of meal I love cooking for the two of us. It starts with simple ingredients that I usually have on hand and takes very little prep work to whip up. I have to say, judging from the popularity of my one skillet dinners, it’s pretty obvious, you guys prefer these kinds of meals too.
I’m going to be straight with you. Today’s tomato baked chicken recipe is a mash-up of a few different recipes I’ve already shared with you already. More specifically, my bruschetta chicken meets a Caprese salad meets my 30-minute mozzarella chicken. It’s the kind of food I think about late into the night while my head rests on my pillow just waiting to drift off to sleep. It’s a little bit of everything. You get a roasted tomato side, a spoon-slurp-worthy gravy, and of course tender chicken under a blanket of melty mozzarella cheese. A new addition to our chicken dinner recipes and I couldn’t be more stoked to share it with you!
Tomato baked chicken starts with chicken breasts. But as always, you can swap them for boneless, skinless chicken thighs as well if that’s more your thing. We’ll season them with ingredients that we’ve already got at home. A little olive oil, a splash of white wine vinegar, a few cloves of garlic and some dried seasonings. You can marinate for as little as 15 minutes and still achieve a great flavor!
I can’t get over how easy it is to put this tomato baked chicken together.
What do you need to make tomato baked chicken?
All you need are four chicken breasts to start. I had two huge ones hidden way in the back of my freezer, so I just sliced them up lengthwise. To marinate the chicken, I just tossed all the ingredients for the marinade into a ziptop bag and gave it a good shake. In goes the chicken. Give it a quick massage to distribute the flavors. If you’re cooking this right away, let it hang out on the counter or if you’re making it later, just refrigerate until you’re ready.
How to make tomato baked chicken:
While the chicken brines, we’ll toss together the ingredients for the tomato pan gravy. You can do this directly in your baking pan, I sure did! Again, humble ingredients that will yield a gourmet dinner you’ll be proud to serve dinner guests. You’ll need roughly three cups of sliced cherry tomatoes mixed with minced garlic, butter, balsamic, a squeeze of honey, chopped basil, dried thyme, and onion powder. When those tomatoes roast with the chicken you’re left with bright and sweet tomato juices that would be delicious drizzled over a bed of rice, pasta, or even some steamed veggies.
During the last 5 minutes, you’ll add shredded mozzarella to the top and pop the chicken back under the broiler just long enough for it to get warm and bubbly. You can make my tomato baked chicken recipe without the mozzarella too if you’d like. I’ve tried it in the past, and it’s still delicious. But personally, the mozzarella adds a cheesy little something to this dish!
Other cheeses that would work well here: provolone. My next best choice.
How to serve Tomato Baked Chicken:
I serve my tomato baked chicken up with a little rice and a side salad, and both Anees and I drizzled that tomato pan gravy over the rice, and I even went as far as using a bit on my salad.
I couldn’t believe my mouth when I first tried this. Could simple ingredients make this kind of dinner?
It’s bright, sweet yet acidic and it is fresh as a good spring meal should be!
shop this post:
[show_shopthepost_widget id=”3114098″]
Garlic Butter Tomato Baked Chicken with Mozzarella
The easiest garlic butter tomato baked chicken with mozzarella. It's a one pan recipe that comes complete with roasted sweet balsamic tomatoes, cooked chicken with melty mozzarella and the most fantastic sauce for your quinoa, rice, pasta, or veggies!
Ingredients
Chicken Marinade:
- 1 tablespoons EACH: olive oil and white wine vinegar
- 3 cloves minced garlic
- ¼ - ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
- ½ teaspoon Italian seasoning
- 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
Balsamic Tomato Pan Sauce:
- 3 cups cherry tomatoes, halved
- 2 tablespoons EACH: balsamic vinegar and melted butter
- 1 tablespoon honey
- 4 cloves minced garlic
- 2 tablespoons chopped basil
- ½ teaspoon EACH: onion powder and dried thyme
- 1½ cups shredded mozzarella cheese
Instructions
- Marinate: Add all the ingredients except the chicken breasts into a zip top bag along with 1 teaspoon of salt and ½ teaspoon black pepper. Seal the bag and shake until mixed. Add the chicken breasts, seal, and massage so the chicken is covered in the marinade, set aside for 10-15 minutes while you prep the remaining ingredients. Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 425ºF.
- Balsamic Tomato Pan Sauce: Add all the ingredients except the mozzarella to an oven-safe baking dish, along with a big pinch of salt and pepper, and stir to combine. Move the tomatoes around the edges and place the chicken breasts in the center.
- Bake: Bake uncovered for 18-22 minutes or until the chicken is almost cooked through. Add the mozzarella cheese to the chicken breasts and broil just long enough for the cheese to melt. Top with additional chopped basil or parsley and serve warm with crusty bread, pasta, rice, or steamed veggies!
Notes
- Extra points for being lazy: you can melt the butter right in your baking dish before adding the remaining ingredients (as long as it is microwave safe!)
- I suggest shredding your own mozzarella for this recipe. Pre-shredded mozzarella didn't yield such great results for me, unfortunately!
- You can marinate the chicken for up to 4 hours! Feel free to do this earlier in the day if you'd like.
Yummy…????
This looks wonderful. I’d love to see a breakdown of the nutritional info. I’m a Keto gal, and I’d love to see how I could ‘Keto-ize’ this-or even see if it is necessary.
Hi Eileen! I don’t have the nutritional information off hand but if you plug the URL of this page into myfitnesspal.com it’ll calculate it all for you! Hope that helps!
Wondered if you made this keto and if so, what did you sub for the honey? If you omit it, would it still turn out?
I hope you dont get offended by people swapping out items but I used tofu instead of chicken. I served my husbands on toasted sourdough and had mine plain. We were both very happy. Delicious recipe.
Not at all, sounds like a great swap to make this vegetarian! I’m happy to hear you both enjoyed it! 🙂
We had this tonight for dinner and it was FANTASTIC!
Thanks so much for a great recipe, the flavor of the tomatoes with the balsamic is incredible. By the way I used a good already shredded mozzarella cheese and it turned out perfect. However what I did do different was put it back in the oven to melt cheese instead of the broiler as my broiler is low and hard to get to on my stove!
Not sure where the butter goes in this recipe. In the title, but not the ingredient list or instructions. Going to make this tonight.
Hi Colleen, the butter is mentioned along with the balsamic vinegar (in bold). You would use it in step 2.
Made this for the first time tonight and my ever so picky 16 year old raved about it!! She said she wanted again this week! Great recipe! Thanks a bunch as it was easy to prepare and cook! A weeknight time saver, for sure.
I tried it today and loved it! I’m sure it will become a regular recipe for us 🙂
I made this tonight and we all enjoyed it! Next time I will marinate the chicken longer. I served it with green beans and it was healthy and delicious.
ThIs tasted great my husband loved it. I found the red pepper too much for me but loved the sweetness of the honey.
I was out of balsamic vinegar so I used balsamic dressing I also used buffalo mozzarella.
I will make again
Plate-licking good. Literally, I did that.
This was one of those rare recipes that I pinned, and instead of immediately forgetting about it, I knew I had to make it in the next week. Well I had an all-around crappy day at work yesterday, and knew this was going to be my cooking therapy for the evening. SO easy, and definitely the best caprese-style chicken I’ve ever had. It actually perked me right back up and turned my day around. Thank you for this gem!!
Also, I subbed red wine vinegar for white, and agave for honey since those are what I had in my cupboard. No regrets, it was still amazing.
Looks yummy, but….my husband can’t process tomato seeds (he has diverticulosis). Any suggestions on a workaround. I am wondering if I could seed plum tomatoes and then cut them into pieces similar to the size of the halved grape tomatoes.
Yes, I think your substitute should work just fine here!
Absolutely delicious! Will make again for sure!
I made this and it was wonderful. I was a bit short on tomatoes, so I added some artichoke hearts to fill the dish (the non marinated kind) and it was perfect over rice. I agree with the comment about using non-preshredded cheese. I started grating my own cheeses a while back and it makes a significant difference in my dishes.
Do you dump the marinade in with the balsamic? Probably a dumb question but I’m making tonight and don’t want to mess it op.
You want to just place the chicken in the prepared baking dish and discard anything (marinade) remaining in the ziptop bag. 🙂
Loved this recipe, but did change it up by using my immersion blender at the end to make more of a gravy – yum! Next time will make mashed potatoes with the sauce.
Super easy recipe and oh my, delicious! Full of flavor. Making it now for the 2nd time. Great for meal prep!
Absolutely amazing! This was a big hit. Thanks for the awesome recipe!
This was absolutely delicious! I sprinkled (the first portion) of chopped garlic on top of the chicken breasts during the marinade phase and all of those flavors really added some depth of flavor during cooking. I used red wine vinegar because that’s what I had on hand and chopped ripe tomatoes instead of the cherry variety. This will definitely be going into my rotation. It really was surprisingly good.
This was so good and SO easy to make! The majority of the ingredients are pantry staples, so I didn’t have to spend much on groceries. The chicken marinade was very flavorful, and the tomato sauce was SUPER tasty; I’d make that on its own to go with other dishes! I served it with warm, crusty bread and garlic and olive oil-sautéed spinach. My boyfriend loved it and went back for seconds. My only problem was that the chicken was underdone at 22 minutes, but maybe I used larger chicken breasts than you did. Either way, this is a recipe I’ll definitely go back to!
Hi Marzia
If one has to make the recipes for 8+ people. Does the Balsamic tomatoe pan sauce and chicken marinade need to double up?
As written it’ll feed 4 people. For 8 people I suggest doubling the ingredient quantities and you’ll need either a larger baking pan or you may want to bake it in two! Hope everyone enjoys it!
Is the pan sauce 2 tablespoons each of balsamic vinegar (chicken breast)? So a total of 8?
2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar total for the pan sauce, same for the butter ?
So easy and so much flavor. Loved it. Served over quinoa and it was delicious. Definitely making it again and again
Hi
Would I be able to use boneless skinless chicken thighs in this recipe.
Yes, boneless, skinless thighs would work. I think there’s a note about it in the text as well 🙂
I don’t see that this chicken has butter in it???? Am I missing something?
The butter is mentioned under the ‘balsamic tomato pan sauce’ section in the ingredients. You’ll add it with the other ingredients in step #2.
Really good recipe. Added some mushrooms and olives. Was really yummy!! Will definitely repeat.
Greetings from South Africa! OH MY WORD, this recipe is so good. I made a few adjustments to suit what i had on hand; used jam tomatoes cut into the same size as the cherry tomatoes (which i had less of),
used 3/4 tsp of garlic powder per garlic clove (coz i’m lazy like that), added some thickly sliced onions and served it with steamed unseasoned pumpkin ( to cut down on the carbs. the tomato juice had plenty of flavour for the pumpkin).
I just loved how lightly flavoured this dish was and it all married together *drool*
I made this tonight and it was super yummy! I didn’t have any red pepper flakes so I used a teaspoon of chili garlic sauce that I had in the pantry. I also added a half of an onion to the tomatoes and no basil because we didn’t have any. I didn’t see the note about mozzarella until after I had already went shopping, but I used part skim shredded mozzarella cheese and it all came together beautifully. The dish was really delicious!
Delicious recipe! My only complaint was that the ‘gravy’ was too watery.. maybe from the breakdown of the tomatoes when they cooked? Have you used a balsamic glaze instead? Just looking for a way to get a richer sauce.
I was wondering the same thing from reading the recipe. Wonder if the chicken is sort of poaching in all that cooking liquid?
What harm comes of marinating it for more than 4 hours?
The acid will start to cook the chicken and it will have a very unpleasant texture.
This was delicious, I didn’t have a few items so I used white rice vinegar instead of white wine vinegar and Mexican cheese blend instead of mozzarella. I also used boneless skinless thighs because they’re cheap and in my opinion much more flavorful. I’ll definitely be making this again!