French Onion Chicken

This French Onion Chicken recipe is sponsored by Danish Creamery Butter.  All opinions are my own.

French Onion Chicken swaddled with melted cheese and bathed in rich, savory, buttery, caramelized onion gravy – all made in one skillet!

This French Onion Chicken will be one of the best chicken dinners you ever sink your teeth into!  It boasts the classic rich, complex, umami flavors of French onion soup but in an easy skillet chicken form! This French Onion Chicken Recipe is made with juicy, golden, pan seared chicken breasts, golden caramelized onions enveloped in velvety sauce, all blanketed with three types of ooey-gooey cheese. The one skillet cooking method makes this recipe a weeknight dinner homerun with hardly any cleanup and the intoxicating flavors are so swoon worthy, it will impress for any special occasion or holiday!  Serve this French Onion Chicken over a bed of mashed potatoes with honey roasted carrots or green bean salad and you have a spectacular, simple, saucy, repeat favorite.

One skillet chicken dinners are a weeknight dinner lifesaver – you can never have enough! Some of our back-pocket favorites include: Creamy Tuscan Chicken, Summer Tuscan Chicken, Chicken Florentine, Creamy Mushroom Chicken, Lemon Pepper Chicken and Asparagus, Chicken Piccata and Coconut Chicken. 

French Onion Chicken Recipe Video

 

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French Onion Chicken Recipe

Calling all French Onion Soup lovers – and non-French Onion Soup lovers – because this French Onion Chicken recipe will make a lover out of you!  This recipe is one of my all-time favorites to date – it will blow your mind!  It transforms humble, pantry friendly ingredients into a luxurious, indulgent feast bursting with rich, deeply complex, sweet, savory flavors you’ll have to taste to believe.

And while this French Onion Chicken looks impressive and tastes phenomenal, it’s deceptively simple to make – if you can stir onions, you can make this recipe! It comes together in one skillet in just over an hour, meaning it’s even faster to make than French Onion Soup, plus it’s a complete meal with protein!  Here are the deets:

THE CHICKEN. This isn’t just boring chicken camouflaged in sauce, the chicken is stand-alone scrumptious. The chicken breasts are lightly dredged in flour and seasonings then pan-seared in Danish Creamery butter to create a flavorful, buttery crust that finishes cooking in the oven, of course elevated further by the blanket of cheese.

THE ONIONS.  You’ll have to dedicate about 20 minutes to sautéing the onions, but the payoff is HUGE.  At the end of 20 minutes, you’ll be rewarded with deeply caramelized, sweet, complex, golden, glorious tender slices of heaven.  And the good news is, you don’t have to babysit the onions like risotto, you can come and go and stir in between other tasks.  Or just pull up a chair, put on your favorite podcast and watch the magical transformation before your eyes. 

THE SAUCE.  The caramelized onions are the star of our sauce made with beef broth, thickened slightly with flour, and laced with dried parsley, dried oregano and dried thyme.  It’s also spiked with my secret, now not-so-secret, ingredients of Worcestershire, soy sauce and beef bouillon that make it exponentially more delicious as they deepen the flavor to complement and stand up against the intensely sweet caramelized flavor of the onions.

THE CHEESE.  Now for the crowning cheese!  I use three types of cheese to round out the flavor profile: quintessential Gruyere, provolone and Parmesan.  You’ll nestle the seared chicken back into the caramelized onion sauce, top with cheeses, throw it in the oven and let it all cook together until the cheeses melt to gooey perfection and the chicken is cooked through.  Serve the sizzling French Onion Chicken over a bed of mashed potatoes and slurp up forkfuls of hot, cheesy, juicy chicken and rich, sweet and savory sauce.  It might just be the perfect bite.

WHAT ARE CARAMELIZED ONIONS?

Before we dive too deep, let’s talk about caramelized onions.  Caramelizing onions is a breathtaking transformation of a humble, sharp, crisp vegetable into a soft, luxuriously sweet, complex delicacy worthy of its very own soup and now it’s very own chicken!

Caramelizing onions is a chemical process in which onions are cooked slowly over medium heat to break down their sugars until soft, sweet, complex and utterly addictive.  The process is simple, easy and straightforward.  The longer you cook the onions, the sweeter they’ll become. So, don’t rush the process!

WHY IS IT CALLED FRENCH ONION CHICKEN?

Classic French Onion Soup gets its name because it originated in France in the 18th century and it has been a national treasure – nay, world treasure – ever since.  French Onion Soup is made with caramelized onions, beef broth, white wine, bay leaves and thyme – thus French + Onion + Soup!

French Onion Chicken transforms French Onion Soup into a rich, velvety sauce to swaddle cheesy chicken. In the chicken version, we skip the croutons and blanket the chicken in cheese instead!

There are two competing legends about the origin of French Onion Soup. The first legend claims King Louis XV returned home from hunting to practically bare cupboards.  All his cook could find were onions, butter, and champagne so they were thrown into a pot and French Onion Soup was born.

The second legend claims Nicolas Appert (inventor of canning) prepared the soup at the hotel kitchen of La Pomme d’Or in Châlons-en-Champagne, when the Duke of Lorraine stopped in on his way to the Palace of Verailles.

The duke was so spellbound by the soup that he left his chambers in his bathrobe to rush to the kitchen to learn the recipe for French Onion Soup so he could take it back to his court.  Appert dedicates his French Onion Soup recipe in his 1831 cookbook to the duke, so, I’m kind of guessing that’s the real story.

No matter who we have to thank for the origin of French Onion Soup, I am grateful it was born and gave rise to this French Onion Chicken recipe!

Onion Chicken ingredients

This French Onion Chicken requires almost all pantry friendly ingredients, you may just need to pick up some easy-to-find cheeses and you’re all set!  Here’s what you’ll need for this easy chicken dinner:

The Best Chicken to use: 

You will want to use four medium chicken breasts pounded to an even thickness.  Look for chicken that is uniform in size so they’ll all cook evenly in the same amount of time.    

You may also use boneless skinless chicken thighs or bone-in chicken thighs and simply adjust the baking time accordingly. You don’t want to use chicken cutlets because they will dry out in the oven while the cheese is melting. 

The best onions to use:

Regular yellow onions are the best onions to use for French Onion Chicken, plus they are the most widely available onion in the U.S., so that’s a bonus. Yellow onions exude both assertive sharpness and mild sweetness.  Their sweetness is the perfect depth for this recipe as it’s exponentially enhanced as the onions caramelize in sizzling butter. On that note, I do not recommend any other variety of onions otherwise the recipe will be too sweet.

You will need two large yellow onions sliced into ¼-inch rings for this recipe.  It will seem like a lot of onions but you will be amazed at how much they cook down.

French Onion SAUCE Ingredients:

• Beef broth: Is a must for French Onion Chicken to deliver that rich, beefy flavor to complement the caramelized onions. Please use reduced sodium beef broth so we have the luxury of adding concentrated beef bouillon. Please do not use chicken broth or vegetable broth because they not have the same richness of beef broth.
• Beef bouillon:  Is a secret ingredient that adds a complex depth of flavor that fools your palate into thinking the caramelized onion sauce has been simmering for hours.  You can use granulated beef bouillon, beef bouillon cubes or better than bouillon.   If using cubes, crush and add directly to the sauce, don’t dissolve in water first.
• Worcestershire sauce: Is a flavor bomb all packed into one bottle.  Just a splash deepens the complexity of the French onion sauce with its intense umami flavor from the soy mingled with sour from tamarind and vinegar, sweetness from molasses and sugar, and dimension from the cloves, celery seed, and chili pepper extract.
• Soy sauce:  Also enhances the umami of the sauce.  Please use  reduced sodium soy sauce so we can control the salt.
• Garlic: I use 4 cloves of garlic and it is divine but feel free to use less if you prefer. You may also use 1 teaspoon garlic powder – but the real stuff is so much better.
• Flour: Slightly thickens the sauce. I used all-purpose flour, but I’m sure a gluten-free substitution would work. 
• Spices: The sauce is seasoned to perfection with dried parsley, dried oregano, dried thyme and a pinch of red pepper flakes.

THE best Cheeses to use:

• Gruyere Cheese: Is the traditional cheese used in classic French Onion Soup – for good reason. It creates the crowning blanket of gooiness that’s slightly salty, sweet, nutty and boasts enough flavor to cut through the richness of the caramelized onion sauce.  Gruyere is a semi-hard, pale yellow Swiss cheese made of whole milk. It is traditionally located with the specialty cheeses in the deli section of your grocery store.  If you have the option to purchase aged Gruyere, then go with that, as the flavors become more complex as the cheese matures.
• Provolone: Is an Italian cheese that’s buttery and salty with a subtle nuttiness.  The longer provolone is aged, the sharper it becomes.  I prefer more mild provolone in this recipe, but it is totally personal preference.  I highly suggest you purchase provolone from the deli counter and ask them to slice it for you – it tastes far superior (almost like a different cheese entirely!) than pre-packaged, pre-sliced provolone.  A great substitute for provolone is fresh sliced mozzarella (but provolone has more flavor).
• Parmesan cheese:  Is wonderfully salty and nutty to complement the robust sweet onions.  For best results, use ONLY freshly grated Parmesan cheese.  It is much more flavorful and melts much better than powdered or pre-shredded cheese.

The best butter to use

This French Onion Chicken recipe glories in butter!  The chicken is cooked in butter and olive oil until golden and then the onions are caramelized in sumptuous butter.  So, for the best tasting French Onion Chicken recipe, use the best butter!  

I prefer and recommend Danish Creamery Butter for its luxurious creaminess – you can literally taste the difference! Slow churned the old-fashioned way in small batches, Danish Creamery’s European Style is a rich velvety butter that has 85% butter fat — the secret to savory flavorful sauces.

Add their butter to this French Onion Chicken recipe and all your other recipes and instantly elevate your cooking!

DO I NEED AN OVEN SAFE SKILLET FOR FRENCH ONION CHICKEN?

You’ll want to use a heavy bottom, oven-proof skillet such as stainless steel or cast iron for this recipe. If you don’t have an oven proof skillet, you can prepare the recipe on the stove then transfer it to an oven safe baking dish before popping it in the oven.  

HOW TO MAKE FRENCH ONION chicken

STEP 1:  Cook Chicken

• Pound chicken:  Don’t skip pounding the chicken to an even thickness! Not only does this ensure it cooks evenly, but it breaks down the protein so the chicken cooks up more tender.   You can pound the chicken by covering the chicken with plastic wrap then pounding with a meat mallet or side of a can. The chicken doesn’t need to be thin; it just needs to be a uniform thickness.
• Dredge chicken:  Before dredging the chicken, pat the chicken dry so the flour and seasonings stick.  Now the chicken is ready to be lightly dredge in a mixture of garlic powder, onion powder, salt and paprika which will elevate the chicken to stand-alone delicious.  After dredging, transfer the chicken to a dry surface. You don’t want to return the chicken to your cutting board because the moisture left behind from the chicken will make the coating wet and rub off.
• Cook chicken:  Melt the 2 tablespoons butter in 2 tablespoons olive oil in a (12-inch) skillet with deep sides.  Once hot, add chicken and cook for 3-4 minutes, or until golden on each side.  Browning the chicken that’s coated in spices blooms the spices and unlocks the flavor.  The chicken will not be cooked through at this point but will finish cooking in the oven.

Step 2: Caramelize Onions

• Cook onions over medium heat: Cook the onions in a generous amount of Danish Creamery Butter and olive oil over medium heat until deeply caramelized, adding additional butter if the onions start sticking to the pan or scorching. We want the onions to cook slowly as the flavor comes from golden caramelization and not burning.
• Stir: You don’t need to stir your onions constantly, but you do need to stir them every few minutes to ensure they are cooking evenly.  You will want to stir them more often when they are reduced and mostly caramelized because then they have a stronger chance of burning.

Step 3: Make Sauce

• Sauté garlic:   Add garlic and red pepper flakes and cook for 30 seconds.  Add soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce and stir to scrape up any browned bits on the bottom of the pan.
• Add the flour: Cook the flour or 1-2 minutes, until the raw flour smell is gone.  The mixture will be pretty thick.
• Finish the sauce: Add beef broth, beef bouillon and all seasonings. Bring to a simmer until thickened. We aren’t going for super thick here, just so it has some nice body to it.

Step 4: Add cheese

• Add cheese:  Once the sauce is thickened, add the chicken back to the skillet and spoon sauce all over the chicken.  Top each piece of chicken with one slice of provolone cheese followed by shredded Gruyere and Parmesan.

Step 5: Bake

• Bake:  Transfer oven-safe skillet to the preheated oven and cook for 10-15 minutes, or until the cheese is melted and chicken is cooked through.  To serve, spoon some sauce over the chicken.

CAN I PREP french onion CHICKEN IN ADVANCE? 

Yes! You can work up to any stage of this French Onion Chicken recipe in advance so the final dish comes together quickly:

• Prep chicken. Pound the chicken to an even thickness and store in an airtight container in the refrigerator. 
• Dredge chicken. You can go one step further and dredge the chicken in flour and spices. Transfer the chicken to a parchment lined plate in a single layer and tightly cover with plastic wrap. Store in the refrigerator.
• Chop onion.  Slice the onions and store in the refrigerator until ready to use.
• Caramelize onions.  Take the next step and caramelize the onions.  Transfer caramelized onions to an airtight container and store in the refrigerator.  When resuming the recipe, heat some butter and olive oil over medium heat along with the onions. Once hot, add the garlic and proceed with the recipe.
• Make sauce. Complete the sauce and store in an airtight container in the refrigerator.  Rewarm before nestling the chicken in the sauce and transferring to the oven.

TIPS FOR MAKING french onion chicken

• Don’t skimp on the butter!  The butter adds the undeniably scrumptious, decadent buttery flavor and keeps the onions from sticking and scorching while cooking. If you want to add more butter than the recipe calls for – go for it- it will just make the onions and subsequent sauce richer and more luxurious.
• Use butter with olive oil:  The olive oil will keep the butter from burning during the long caramelization process as well as add flavor, so don’t skip!
• Use yellow onions: They provide the best-balanced flavor for French Onion Chicken – savory and pungent yet mildly sweet when caramelized.
• Cut onions uniformly: Try and slice your onions into uniform rings so they cook evenly.  Keep your onion slices about ¼” thick.  This might seem thick but will cook down considerably.  Onions that are too thin will end up stringy and mushy – we don’t want that!
• Caramelize more: If you think your onions are caramelized but not sure, cook on!  The last few minutes of caramelization is crucial for intensely sweet onions, because the deeper the color, the deeper the flavor.  They should be quite dark golden but not burnt. 
• Use a hot pan for the chicken:  Add your chicken only once the pan is hot – you should hear the chicken sizzle the second it touches the pan. If you add chicken to a lukewarm pan it will not sear, and as we all know from Gordon Ramsey, color = flavor.  Searing the chicken results in the Maillard reaction, also known as the flavor reaction, in which amino acids and reducing sugars produce browning and complex flavor. Note, that hot doesn’t mean high heat, but it means it’s reached full temperature (medium-high in this case). 
• Only flip the chicken once: Adding the chicken to a hot skillet heated to medium high heat is only half the battle. Resist the urge to move the chicken as it cooks or to flip it more than once. The chicken needs to stay in the same place for a continuous amount of time to brown. When the chicken is browned, it will naturally release from the pan.
• Scrape up golden bits.  After you cook the chicken there will be golden bits on the bottom of the pan. Make sure to scrape up the bits while you caramelize the onions because they are flavor gold!
• Don’t overcook chicken:  The first step is to sear the chicken on the stove, not cook it all the way through because it will continue to cook in the oven. Chicken, especially chicken breasts, are juiciest when not overcooked. The best and most efficient way to check for doneness is to insert a meat thermometer into the chicken; chicken breasts are done when they register 165 degrees F. 

French Onion Chicken Breast variations

• Add mushrooms:  Pan fry mushrooms in butter and olive oil like in my Creamy Mushroom Chicken recipe. Add the mushrooms to the sauce right before adding the chicken and popping it in the oven.  You may need to add an additional ½ cup broth to the sauce to accommodate the mushrooms.
• Alternate protein: This French onion sauce is so dreamy you’ll want to serve it with everything!  You can serve it over pork medallions, pork chops, steak, Salisbury steak, beef tenderloin, pot roast, etc. all with or without the cheese.
• Add veggies: Add any chopped vegetables directly to the skillet such as asparagus, broccoli, zucchini, green beans, etc. and sauté them with the caramelized onions the last few minutes of cooking. Again, you may need additional broth to accommodate the extra volume.

WHAT TO SERVE WITH french onion CHICKEN?  

This French Onion Chicken recipe is begging to be served over mashed potatoes -seriously a match made in heaven!  I’m not even going to offer alternatives (other than low carb cauliflower mashed potatoes), because nothing is as good!

Now that the main event is squared away, let’s talk sides.  We love serving this French Onion Chicken alongside a bright fresh salad such as wedge salad, strawberry salad, or spinach berry salad in the spring/summer and apple salad,  Fall salad or beet salad in the Winter.  It’s also tasty with roasted or sautéed veggie on the side such as honey roasted carrots, roasted root vegetables, roasted Brussels sprouts, roasted broccoli, or asparagus. 

For fruit, go as simple as melon or grapes or as flirty as Fruit Salad with Honey Lime Vinaigrette, Winter Fruit Salad and Berry Salad in Honey Mascarpone.

Lastly, bread is a must to ensure no sauce is left behind.  You can serve this French Onion Chicken with a simple side of crusty bread or we’re obsessed with my Garlic Bread, Dinner Rolls, or Garlic Parmesan Butter Breadsticks. 

How to store and reheat Easy French Onion Chicken

• To store: French Onion Chicken should be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for up to five days. 
• To Freeze: Let the skillet cool completely then transfer the contents to a freezer safe bag and squeeze out excess air to prevent freezer burn or transfer to an airtight freezer safe container. Freeze for up to 3 months. Thaw in the refrigerator completely before reheating.
• To reheat in the microwave:  Heat for 1 minute, then at 30-second intervals until warmed through. 
• To reheat in the oven: Transfer chicken to an oven safe dish and cover with foil. Bake at 350 degrees F for 15 minutes or until warmed through.

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LOOKING FOR MORE SKILLET CHICKEN DINNERS? 

• Creamy Tuscan Chicken and Potatoes 
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• Chicken and Potato Skillet 
• Creamy Chicken Florentine
• Creamy Coconut Chicken
• One-Skillet Mexican Chicken and Rice
• Sun-Dried Tomato Pasta with Chicken 
• All of my chicken recipes!