Forget store bought Lemon Pepper seasoning. The best way to make homemade Lemon Pepper Chicken is with lemon zest (no juice!), black pepper, garlic and olive oil. Simple, fragrant and delicious. Make this with any cut of chicken you want, grill it, bake it or sear it.
So simple and easy to make, you can make this tonight!
Sometimes, the simplest of ideas turn out to be annoyingly difficult to achieve. All I wanted was to make a homemade Lemon Pepper Chicken i.e. without using a packet of Lemon Pepper seasoning.
Making a homemade Lemon Pepper seasoning to sprinkle onto chicken requires slow baking lemon zest to dry it out before mixing with salt and pepper. So essentially making a flavoured salt.
But I wanted something I could make tonight, any night, on a whim. Because Lemon Pepper Chicken is definitely a midweek-meal-type-food, don’t you think? Something you should be able to make right now.
As it turns out, finding a short cut way of making a chicken with a real lemon flavour (i.e. not just lemon sour flavour) wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be because the actual lemon flavour in lemons is not in the juice, it’s in the zest. The juice is a bit lemony, but mostly it is sour. But Lemon Pepper Chicken is not sour or even tangy.
So anyway, I won’t take you through the various methods I attempted before landing on “the recipe”. Suffice to say the challenge was figuring out an easy way to get the zest and pepper to actually stick to the chicken, along with garlic (or onion) powder for extra flavour.
So this is how I do it: mix zest and olive oil to make a rub, slather it onto the chicken, then dip into flour seasoned with pepper, garlic (or onion) powder and salt.
Not a drop of lemon juice in sight. Only because I wanted to replicate store bought lemon pepper seasoning which is not tangy. You can definitely add a squeeze of lemon juice into the lemon zest slather (is that what it’s called??). But just a bit. Because I find that the key to getting the lemon zest to stick to the chicken is to only use a bit of oil. Too much oil and the zest just runs off.
I don’t use the lemon juice for the seasoning but what I like to do is slice it up and pan fry it, partly for garnish and also to give people the option to squeeze some over the chicken.
Got lemons? Got chicken? Then try this for dinner tonight! – Nagi x
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Lemon Pepper Chicken
Ingredients
- 2 chicken breasts (~250 - 300g / 8 - 10oz each)
- 2 lemons (Note 1)
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 3 tbsp flour
- 1/2 - 3/4 tsp salt
- 2 1/2 tsp cracked black pepper (adjust to taste) (Note 2)
- 1/2 tsp garlic powder (or sub with onion powder) (Note 3)
Cooking
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- Fresh parsley , for garnish
Instructions
- Cut the chicken in half horizontally to make 2 steaks. Optional: pound to make them even thickness around 1cm / 2/5" thick (I do this).
- Zest the lemons to make 1 1/2 - 2 tbsp lemon zest. Avoid grating too much of the white part - it's bitter.
- Place zest into bowl with 1 tbsp olive oil and mix to combine. Add chicken and use your hands to slather oil mixture onto chicken.
- Mix flour, salt, pepper and garlic powder in a shallow bowl.
- Dip chicken into flour mixture, shaking to remove excess.
- Heat oil in a skillet over medium high heat. Cook chicken for 2 minutes on each side, or until golden.
- Optional: Slice zested lemon and cook the slices, like pictured.
- Serve chicken, garnished with fresh parsley if using.
Recipe Notes:
Nutrition Information:
WATCH HOW TO MAKE IT
LIFE OF DOZER
T’was a lovely weekend for tea in the sun. Dozer is an excellent cafe dog!
Simple and very tasty. Chicken stayed very moist, with a nice background hum of heat from the pepper. Served with Nagi, 12 minute Cous Cous salad. Tasty and quick.
So flavourful n juicy. Do share other juicy simple chicken dishes recipes which are easy to cook.
Hi Nagi, could you please give any advice on baking these? Would chicken tenders be ok? Spray oil?
Haven’t bought this in years and great to have a homemade version! We went for rapeseed oil (cos it was all I had) and copied a fellow gluten-free reviewer and used rice flour. Roasted veg with it tonight but it’ll be chips at the weekend!
Oh my gosh! I don’t know why I’m still surprised by how delicious & simple your recipes are, but you never cease to amaze me. Curse words always flow from my mouth when taking my first bite from a Nagi recipe. The flavor on this dish is perfect and the chicken stays so juicy!! Another Nagi go-to recipe to add to my long list.
Made the lemon chicken tonight and it turned out great. I might have cooked it a little too long but it was good. Thank you for all your help
Made this today for lunch. Simple ingredients but packed with flavour! Another keeper.
Hi Nagi and Dozer, just tried the recipe, simply delicious! Our lives have been transformed since I found your fantastic web site. I thought I was a competent cook until I found your recipes. Thank you so much, we had this with a mixed vegetable cheese dish, we used a frozen packet of mixed veg with a cheesy topping, lovely, keep up the good work thanks from sunny Cyprus.
Made this tonight for dinner – a well seasoned dish! I made a glaze (white wine, butter, chicken broth, touch of garlic powder) – super duper!!!
Sounds fab Angie! N x
Delish! Another hit with the family, Nagi! I don’t even bother looking anywhere else for recipes now x
That’s the best compliment ever!
I made your crispy garlic shrimp and it was a big hit! My son thought it was one of the best shrimp dishes that I’ve made. The butter, garlic and lemon sauce was fantastic. Thank you.
That’s awesome to hear Peggy!
Hi I haven’t cooked this recipe yet but i would like too . Is there a healthy flour choice I can use … Ive never cooked with flour recipies before but I’d like to try and keep it healthy as well. Thanks !
Nagi. thank you for all your beautiful recipes. And this one looks super easy and tasty. Do you think it would work with fish? Noelene
Hi Noelene, yes this would be terrific with fish!
Lemon pepper seasoning in a bottle is usually too peppery, too sour, or too bitter. The chicken maintains moisture, does not retain a thick, greasy crust, and produces incredible flavor without using a drop of lemon juice! Hoping to achieve the same goodness with tilapia filets.
You’ll far surpass anything from a bottle with this recipe! I hope you love it!
Hi Nagi,
What kind of accompaniments would you recommend for this recipe?
Ps: you have a lovely website 🙂
Hi Nagi,
I was just wondering if this recipe would still work as well if i used smaller cuts of chicken.
Thank you, Nicola x
Absolutely Nicola! Even tenderloin will be great 🙂 N x
Made this recently as a week night meal for the family. Very quick, easy and tasty so I will definitely make this again. Thumbs up from the family too 🙂
Thanks Nagi
I LOVE hearing that Karen! Thanks so much for letting me know! N xx
Hi Nagi,
We are always looking for healthier dinner options, so I decided to try this for dinner tonight. I knew by the way it smelled cooking, that it would be good. It was actually better! I made it just as you described, including pounding out the breasts after cut in half. My wife snagged the 2 extra pieces and put them in her lunch meal preps. Thanks for sharing this delicious recipe.
Love hearing that Steve! so glad you enjoyed it! N x
This recipe worked incredibly. I did not use the garlic powder but it is a great recipe. Thank you so much !! I’m passing this over to my mom.
🙌🏻 I’m so glad you enjoyed this Melanie, thanks for letting me know! N x
You are a genius! My husband and I had this for lunch. We ate the whole thing. I like that I had all the ingredients on hand already. No special trips to the store for esoteric ingredients. I like that there was just enough coating for the one pound of chicken breast. No waste. I like that this is a “healthy” fried chicken. My husband loves fried chicken. And I could serve this to guests, too. But I’d better make a triple recipe!