Chicken With Cranberry Sauce

A healthy chicken and salad meal
kivoart / Getty Images
Prep: 5 mins
Cook: 45 mins
Total: 50 mins
Servings: 6 servings

When you need a quick dinner to fix for the family on a busy weeknight and want to minimize mess, this chicken with cranberry sauce recipe will become your go-to. With just four ingredients and a couple minutes of preparation, this chicken recipe is an easy, fix-and-forget-it way to serve your kids a dinner they’ll actually eat.

We usually think of cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving as well as Christmas but it is also great during the rest of the year. It is delicious in recipes like this great weeknight chicken recipe as well as glazes and sauces.

Ingredients

  • 6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

  • 1 (1-ounce) envelope dried French onion soup mix

  • 1 (16-ounce) can cranberry sauce

  • 1 cup Catalina salad dressing

Steps to Make It

  1. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Spray a 9 x 13 baking dish with cooking spray.

  2. Place the chicken breasts in baking dish. Sprinkle French onion soup mix evenly over chicken breasts.

  3. In a medium bowl, whisk together cranberry sauce and salad dressing. Pour over the chicken breasts.

  4. Bake for 45 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through.

Recipe Tips

You can buy already made cranberry sauce or make your own. For homemade, cook down fresh cranberries with a little sugar or another kind of sweetener. The berries can be cooked until they pop and made into a smooth sauce, or simmered for a shorter amount of time so some of the berries are left whole. The natural pectin in the berries thickens the sauce.

Catalina dressing is similar to French dressing but is not as creamy and has a brighter red hue. It is a combination of tomato ketchup and sweetener as well as tangy ingredients like lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, and Dijon mustard. You can purchase store-bought or make it from scratch.

This chicken dish is perfect as a main dish for dinner with a side of rice and a green vegetable, but it is also great sliced and served up with extra cranberry sauce in a sandwich, or added to a fresh green salad with crumbled blue cheese and some chopped nuts, such as walnuts or pecans for added crunch. You can also turn it into a chicken salad by adding a light mayonnaise dressing and maybe a few halved grapes and dried cranberries tossed in.

Other Savory Cranberry Dishes

If this sweet and savory chicken recipe is a hit in your house, you may want to try a few other dishes at dinnertime. Salmon is delicious when topped with a cranberry sauce, and pork loin is complemented nicely by an apple cranberry sauce. For a fun appetizer or dinner, serve meatballs simmered in a cranberry sauce studded with pineapple.

Nutrition Facts (per serving)
482 Calories
12g Fat
53g Carbs
39g Protein
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Nutrition Facts
Servings: 6
Amount per serving
Calories 482
% Daily Value*
Total Fat 12g 16%
Saturated Fat 3g 16%
Cholesterol 102mg 34%
Sodium 1074mg 47%
Total Carbohydrate 53g 19%
Dietary Fiber 2g 6%
Total Sugars 41g
Protein 39g
Vitamin C 2mg 11%
Calcium 33mg 3%
Iron 2mg 11%
Potassium 427mg 9%
*The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a food serving contributes to a daily diet. 2,000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice.
(Nutrition information is calculated using an ingredient database and should be considered an estimate.)