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!
This will be a must do for me as I love anything with lemons so delicious, thanks Nagi it’s a winner once again like all your beautiful recipes and also love seeing Dozer in on the act ???
Thank you Kristine!!! So glad you love seeing Dozer 🙂 Lucky I have such a cute dog!!!
Good morning Nagi
Another wonderful recipe from the ‘food goddess’ of the north shore…………..will be making this at the weekend… tonight we are having your Lamb Shanks in Red Wine and I can’t wait to try them. I use the crock pot method because my Dutch oven was too small for my 6 lamb shanks… yep that’s right 6 lamb shanks!!! I think looking at the sauce that it would have been a richer gravy if I had cooked it in the oven in my Dutch Oven dish. I always find the sauce from crockpot cooking is a little ‘thin’ and lacks flavour, but that could be me I just love my Dutch Oven pots!!:)
Ooooh – you make lamb shanks midweek? I want to be YOUR neighbour!!! Thank you for your lovely compliment, but a goddess I am not! I am about the total opposite of the serene Nigella / Donna Hay type as you can be! N x
Drooling on the bus at 8am is sooooo not a good look! Bahaha! I’m making this tonight for sure. We have a house full of people at the moment – 4 adults and 4 kids in our teeny house and it’s mad and crazy and hectic, but fun too. I’m making this for the adults tonight to enjoy after the kids have gone to bed. Can’t wait!
Hiiiii Gloria! How are you? Sounds cosy but FUN in your household!! N xx
Have you grilled this chicken before???? Looks easy and delicious. Babysitting my grandsons this week…this will be on the menu…is there a strong Pepper flavor????? BTW, For my son’s birthday on Oct 16, making your leg of lamb recipe..:)
Hi Lyn! Definately, it works fabulously on the grill! It will be more charred but the flavour is even better with the charred flavour! N x
Hi, Nagi. I am a newcomer to your yummy website. Does your invitation to “Subscribe” mean there is a charge for accessing or accepting ANY perks offered? I look forward to your reply and to trying some of your luscious dishes. Hope I do them justice! Thanks. ?
Hi Linda! Absolutely not! 100% free, no conditions, you can leave my mail list at any time! N x
You do such a great job of photographing your work.
Thank you so much Nancy! I do love taking photos of food 🙂 I try to make it LOOK as good as it tastes!!! N x
Great idea rubbing the mix on the chicken then in the flour. Looks scrumptious and crispy. Plus, isn’t the flavor of the charred lemons so good? Love it!
Thanks Kevin!! I love charring lemons 🙂 Love the taste! N x
Looks good. Cheaper than buying the lemon salt from Istanbul. The lemon salt was good but it was so expansive from the spice market.
I bet it’s GOOD though!!! Here in Sydney I wouldn’t buy lemon salt unless it was from a local market!
Hi Nagi! I have not made lemon pepper chicken in forever! I used to buy a white Worcestershire sauce that had a recipe on the bottle, but I don’t think it is sold anymore. I like this fast, fresh approach…simple and simply good!
White W Sauce?? I’ve never heard of such a thing! Yet another item to add to my US shopping list…. 😉
Lovely recipe and a perfect use of the loads of fruit from my lemon tree. I adore chook and could eat it 7 days a week, so always need new ideas to keep it fresh!
Thank you Amanda! I’m so glad you like the look of this! N x