80 Unexpectedly Good Chicken Recipes
These healthier recipes are anything but boring.
When you think of eating healthy, do you instantly imagine eating plain rice, steamed veggies, and boring, dry chicken breast over and over? Think again! For Team Delish, eating healthy means maximizing variety, and we’ve got tons of healthy versions of your chicken favorites (lightened up chicken Parm, anyone?), plus salads, lettuce wraps, sandwiches, and more. We know health looks different to different people, so we’ve included options for every diet, like low-carb, paleo, low-oil, and keto. Whether you're reaching for chicken breasts, thighs (the favorite cut of the Delish kitchen), or a whole bird, the options are endless. Check out our top healthy chicken recipes—you’ll be sure to find a new weeknight favorite.
Let’s go back to that boring, plain piece of chicken breast for a minute. On its own, chicken can be a great healthy choice—it’s full of lean protein, amino acids (including serotonin-boosting tryptophan), and is a great alternative to red meat. No matter how good it is for you though, it doesn’t matter if you never want to eat it. Trust us—all it takes is some spices, sauces, and a bit of prep to make chicken dishes that’ll stand up to even the most decadent of options. Try adding different spices, like the taco seasoning in our chicken fajitas or everything bagel seasoning in our keto everything bagel chicken; extra flavorful sauces, like in our chimichurri chicken salad or our sheet-pan harissa chicken & sweet potatoes; or replacing fatty or carb-heavy ingredients with others, like in our keto fried chicken (breaded with pork rinds) our our Greek chicken potato salad (no mayo, tons of flavor).
And we can’t overlook our air fryer—it’s hands down the best kitchen appliance to invest in if you’re trying to cut down on oil in your kitchen. We’ve included some of our favorite air fryer chicken recipes here—like our orange chicken, crispy chicken sandwich, and air fryer chipotle chicken meatballs—but feel free to explore all the (100+!) other things you can make in one too.
Want more healthy meal inspiration? Check out our favorite healthy breakfasts, packed lunches, and low-calorie desserts too.
Lemony Chicken & Potatoes With Feta
Freshen up a classic dish, lemon chicken and potatoes, by spooning the most flavorful olive, almond, and parsley sauce over top. Prepared from the pan drippings, the sauce is so simple to make without getting out an extra pot. The best part? This entire recipe is made in just one dish, making dinner (and cleanup) easier than ever.
Get the Lemony Chicken & Potatoes With Feta recipe.
Sheet-Pan Harissa Chicken & Sweet Potatoes
This easy-as-can-be weeknight dinner is a complete meal made on one sheet pan. Bonus: If you roast the sweet potatoes as indicated, your gift = creamy centers and crispy edges, enhanced by jammy red onions. Using bone-in thighs pretty much guarantees super-tender chicken, too!
Get the Sheet-Pan Harissa Chicken & Sweet Potatoes recipe.
Tomato-Butter Roast Chicken
Tomato butter works wonders on chicken. Not only does it keep the bird moist, but the healthy dose of tomato paste brings a slightly sweet, umami acidity, which chicken could often use. Plus, there are no better veggies than ones that have been roasted underneath a chicken, collecting all of that flavor-packed schmaltz. This is a great way to add some excitement to a classic roast chicken.
Get the Tomato-Butter Roast Chicken recipe.
Hot Honey Chicken & Rice Bowls
If you're like us and put hot honey on everything, then this dinner is for you. Chicken is tossed in hot honey that you make yourself, so the heat level is completely up to you. We recommended drizzling any extra honey from the pan over the bowls for an added kick. 😎
Get the Hot Honey Chicken & Rice Bowls recipe.
Indonesian Chicken Soup
You can serve this warming, packed-full soup with rice, rice noodles, boiled potatoes, lime wedges, fresh tomatoes, cabbage, bean sprouts, boiled eggs, fried shallots, sambal, celery leaves, and scallions. Pick your favorites and make this soup your own!
Get the Indonesian Chicken Soup recipe.
Za'atar Sheet-Pan Chicken
We’ve made a lot of great sheet-pan dinners, but this za’atar chicken recipe is a new favorite. Bone-in chicken thighs, baby potatoes, broccoli, and red onion are all tossed in a simple olive oil, lemon juice, and za’atar marinade, then roasted to crispy, schmaltzy perfection. And just to kick it up another notch, we’re drizzling it all in a creamy tahini sauce to finish it off.
Get the Za'atar Sheet-Pan Chicken recipe.
Cheesy Salsa Chicken And Cauliflower Rice Skillet
Pull out some frozen chicken, riced cauliflower, a bottle of salsa verde, plus a block of cheese, and you’re ready to make a low-key low-carb dinner. Bonus: You can whip this up in just 25 minutes—seriously.
Get the Cheesy Salsa Chicken And Cauliflower Rice Skillet recipe.
Keto Chicken Soup
When we're sick, or hungover, or we've just eaten WAY too much junk, we always crave a simple and satisfying chicken noodle soup. Packed with veggies and protein (and cauliflower rice instead of noodles in this recipe), it's exactly what we need to get us back on track.
Get the Keto Chicken Soup recipe.
One-Pan Balsamic Chicken and Asparagus
This one-pan meal is one of our most frequented weeknight dinners. What's not to love? It's healthy, easy, and the sauce is a knockout. If you wanted to add a carb (and we’re often in favor of carbs), consider serving it over a bed of brown rice or with a loaf of crusty bread... you'll want something to soak up that sauce!
Get the One-Pan Balsamic Chicken and Asparagus recipe.
Chicken Fajitas
We can thank the cuisine of Tex-Mex for the classic fajita. Minimal prep and minimal cook time means these can be on your dining room table FAST. Fiesta time!
Get the Chicken Fajitas recipe.
Healthy Chicken Noodle Soup
Classic chicken noodle soup is already pretty good for you, but we made this even healthier by loading it up with lots of kale, using low-sodium broth, and opting for boneless skinless chicken breast. We also used gluten-free noodles, but classic egg noodles would be more than fine here.
Get the Healthy Chicken Noodle Soup recipe.
One-Pan Chicken And Quinoa
Here’s a quick and easy dinner that’s high in protein and takes very little effort. We love the Tex-Mex spices here; the chili powder and cayenne add a nice kick that the avocado and sour cream perfectly offset. Of course, feel free to use a little less of either spice if you prefer.
Get the One-Pan Chicken And Quinoa recipe.
Greek Stuffed Chicken
On its own, chicken breast is sort of a blank canvas. But stuff it with Greek salad-inspired ingredients, and you've got an insanely flavorful, healthy, and fun weeknight dinner.
Get the Greek Stuffed Chicken recipe.
Keto Fried Chicken
To make a keto-friendly fried chicken we skipped the flour and breaded them in pork rinds, almond flour, and Parmesan. We also baked this chicken to skip all of the unnecessary oil—it still bakes into a chicken breast that you would swear was fried. Feel free to use thighs or drumsticks as well if you like.
Get the Keto Fried Chicken recipe.
Peanut-Sesame Chicken Lettuce Cups
These flavor-packed lettuce wraps are as simple as it gets for a weeknight dinner. For the juiciest, most tender shredded chicken, try to pick breasts that are similar in size, so they cook at roughly the same rate. Then toss in the peanut sauce while hot for maximum flavor absorption!
Chicken Primavera Spaghetti Squash Boats
Spaghetti squash turns our favorite angel hair pasta primavera into a gluten-free, low-carb dinner. It's the perfect healthy dinner to keep things fresh—swap in your favorite fall veggies to make it extra seasonal.
Perfect Baked Chicken Breast
It's kind of amazing how much of a difference brown sugar, garlic powder, and paprika can make. Not only does it add a slightly smoky, sweet taste, but it makes your chicken look way prettier. (Though healthy, naked chicken breasts are a very sad sight to behold.)
Get the Perfect Baked Chicken Breast recipe.
Healthy Chicken Casserole
This satisfying casserole has ALL of your favorite fall ingredients: Brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes, and cranberries. Make it for a big crowd, or pack it up and eat the leftovers for lunch. It's a healthy meal prep DREAM.
Get the Harvest Chicken Casserole recipe.
Skinny Cashew Chicken with Cauliflower Rice
This absurdly easy low-carb dish only takes 30 minutes from start to finish (yep!), and the addicting sauce has only five ingredients. You literally can't beat that.
Garlic Butter Meatballs
These garlic butter meatballs are low-carb, gluten-free, and veggie-packed without skipping out on any of the tastiness. Now this is a low-carb dinner you can feel good about.
Get the Garlic Butter Meatballs recipe.
Camille Lowder is the digital food producer at Delish, otherwise known as our resident queen of recipe galleries. Previously, she attended the Natural Gourmet Institute for culinary school and worked at/managed a number of New York restaurants. She loves anything vegan, foods masquerading as other foods (hello, cauliflower), and a well-used Oxford comma.
Mackenzie Filson is a food writer and contributing digital food producer at Delish. Her favorite ice cream flavor is chocolate-pine. If wine was an astrological sign she'd be a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. She's never met a bag of Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos she didn't eat in one sitting.
