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Home Collections 15 Minute Meals

Lemon Pepper Chicken

By:Nagi
Published:10 Oct '16Updated:29 Jan '19
81 Comments
Recipe v Video v Dozer v

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!

Forget store-bought seasoning! This homemade Lemon Pepper Chicken is so simple and fast, you can make it tonight. It tastes incredible! recipetineats.com

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.

Forget store-bought seasoning! This homemade Lemon Pepper Chicken is so simple and fast, you can make it tonight. It tastes incredible! recipetineats.com

Forget store-bought seasoning! This homemade Lemon Pepper Chicken is so simple and fast, you can make it tonight. It tastes incredible! recipetineats.com

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.

Forget store-bought seasoning! This homemade Lemon Pepper Chicken is so simple and fast, you can make it tonight. It tastes incredible! recipetineats.com

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

Forget store-bought seasoning! This homemade Lemon Pepper Chicken is so simple and fast, you can make it tonight. It tastes incredible! recipetineats.com

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Forget store-bought seasoning! This homemade Lemon Pepper Chicken is so simple and fast, you can make it tonight. It tastes incredible! recipetineats.com

Lemon Pepper Chicken

Author: Nagi | RecipeTin Eats
Prep: 10 mins
Cook: 5 mins
Total: 15 mins
Dinner
5 from 22 votes
Servings4
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A homemade version of lemon pepper chicken made without store-bought lemon pepper seasoning. It tastes incredible - fresh, fragrant with lovely pops of heat from the pepper. No marinating time required. Great for pork and seafood too! RECIPE VIDEO BELOW.

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:

1. You need enough lemons to make around 1 1/2 - 2 tbsp of lemon zest. 2 medium size lemons is usually enough.
2. I make cracked pepper using my mortar and pestle to roughly crack whole peppercorns because I like large pops of black pepper. You can just use a coarse pepper grinder. If you only have fine ground pepper (like the pepper that comes pre-ground), only use around 3/4 tsp.
3. Option to mix minced garlic into lemon zest slather instead of using powder. I prefer powder because it has a smoother flavour finish, more akin to store bought seasoning.
4. This recipe also works great with pork and seafood. It's a little too delicate for lamb and beef, in my opinion.
Homemade Lemon Pepper Chicken nutrition per serving, assuming 4 servings.
homemade-lemon-pepper-chicken-nutrition

Nutrition Information:

Serving: 141gCalories: 291cal (15%)Carbohydrates: 5.6g (2%)Protein: 41g (82%)Fat: 11.6g (18%)Saturated Fat: 1g (6%)Polyunsaturated Fat: 10.6gCholesterol: 107mg (36%)Sodium: 436mg (19%)Fiber: 0.5g (2%)
Did you make this recipe?I love hearing how you went with my recipes! Tag me on Instagram at @RecipeTinEats.


WATCH HOW TO MAKE IT


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Hi, I'm Nagi!

I believe you can make great food with everyday ingredients even if you’re short on time and cost conscious. You just need to cook clever and get creative!

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81 Comments

  1. Jo says

    January 4, 2023 at 6:01 pm

    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.

    Reply
  2. Cathy says

    May 4, 2022 at 10:17 pm

    Hi Nagi, could you please give any advice on baking these? Would chicken tenders be ok? Spray oil?

    Reply
  3. Juice says

    September 23, 2021 at 3:01 am

    5 stars
    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!

    Reply
  4. Nikki says

    January 26, 2021 at 2:31 pm

    5 stars
    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.

    Reply
  5. Everet says

    December 17, 2020 at 2:49 pm

    5 stars
    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

    Reply
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Hi, I'm Nagi!

I believe you can make great food with everyday ingredients even if you’re short on time and cost conscious. You just need to cook clever and get creative! Read More

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