What to Cook With Chicken Tonight — 15 Easy Dinner Ideas

When speed matters, chicken thighs and thinly sliced breast are your best friends. Both cook fast and stay juicy at high heat — two things you need when you're making dinner on a tight schedule. The key to fast chicken that actually tastes good is getting the pan or grill properly hot before the chicken goes in. A pale, steam-cooked chicken thigh takes twice as long and tastes half as good as one that hits a properly preheated surface.

These first few recipes come together in 15 to 25 minutes from prep to plate. They use simple techniques — grilling, stir-frying, quick pan-searing — that produce proper results without a lot of standing over the stove.

Grilled chicken thighs with BBQ sauce are about as reliable as weeknight cooking gets. Bone-in thighs are more forgiving than breast — they stay moist even if you pull them a minute late — and the caramelised BBQ glaze adds depth that makes them taste far more involved than the prep time suggests. Serve with rice, a simple slaw, or whatever vegetable you have to hand.

Great for: quick family dinners, batch grilling for leftovers, anyone new to cooking chicken.

Chicken and vegetable lo mein is one of the best 15-minute dinners in the entire recipe collection. The technique — high heat, fast stir-fry, big sauce — rewards speed rather than punishing it. Use any vegetables that need using up: broccoli, snap peas, bell pepper, courgette, or a combination. The noodles soak up the savory sauce and the chicken stays tender because it's added last and barely needs cooking.

Great for: clearing the vegetable drawer, feeding 2 to 4 people quickly, introducing kids to noodle dishes.

Kung pao chicken delivers restaurant-quality results at home when you follow a few key steps: the chicken needs to be velveted (coated in cornstarch and briefly cooked), the chilies and Sichuan peppercorns need to bloom in oil before anything else goes in, and the sauce goes in last over high heat. None of this is difficult — it just requires a bit of organisation.

Great for: people who like bold, spicy-sweet flavours, impressing guests with a takeaway-quality dish cooked at home.

Some of the best chicken dinners take 30 to 45 minutes but require mostly passive time — the oven or the pot does the work while you do something else. These are the recipes worth having in your regular rotation when you want something genuinely good rather than just quick.

Stuffed chicken breasts and keto parmesan are in this tier — slightly more involved prep, but the result looks and tastes impressive. They're also well-suited to cooking for guests because almost everything can be prepped ahead.

Keto chicken parmesan replaces the breadcrumb coating with a combination of almond flour and parmesan that gets genuinely crispy in the oven. It's lower in carbs than the original, but that's almost secondary — the texture is outstanding. The chicken stays moist, the crust holds up under the marinara, and the whole thing bakes in under 25 minutes.

Great for: low-carb eaters, anyone who finds the traditional breadcrumb version too heavy, a quick weeknight dinner that looks like effort.

Properly crispy baked chicken wings require one technique that most recipes skip: thoroughly drying the wings and coating them with a small amount of baking powder before they go in the oven. This is the difference between pale, soft-skinned wings and the genuinely crunchy result you want. Sauce them after baking to keep the skin crisp.

Great for: casual dinner nights, sharing with guests, anyone who wants wings without deep-frying.

Stuffed chicken breast sounds difficult but the technique is straightforward once you've done it once. Butterfly the breast to create a pocket, fill with the spinach and feta mixture, and either seal with toothpicks or simply fold it over. Sear briefly in an ovenproof pan, then finish in the oven. The filling keeps the inside moist and adds enormous flavour.

Great for: dinner parties, a weeknight meal that feels special without a complicated recipe.

Classic fried chicken requires a proper marinade — buttermilk overnight is ideal, minimum 2 hours — and a well-seasoned flour coating. The oil temperature matters more than most recipes acknowledge: too cool and the coating absorbs oil and goes soggy; too hot and the outside burns before the inside cooks through. 165°C to 175°C (325°F to 350°F) and patience is the formula.

Great for: weekend cooking when you have more time, feeding a crowd, anyone who wants to nail the real technique.

One-pot chicken dishes are among the most satisfying dinners you can make — the chicken, rice or vegetables, and sauce all cook together, building layers of flavour that single-component dishes can't match. They're also genuinely forgiving, because the liquid environment means the chicken can barely overcook without everything else drying out first.

Arroz con pollo, biryani, and maqluba all fall into this category: the chicken cooks into the rice, lending it fat, flavour, and seasoning. You end up with a complete meal from a single pot and barely any washing up.

Arroz con pollo — chicken with rice — is one of the most universal comfort food formats in the world, and for good reason. This version is built on a sofrito base of tomatoes, peppers, and garlic with saffron or turmeric for colour, and the chicken and rice cook together until the rice has absorbed all of the flavourful cooking liquid.

Great for: feeding a family from one pan, a meal that reheats brilliantly for the next day.

Chicken biryani is more involved than most of these recipes, but it's one of the most rewarding things you can cook. The layered rice and chicken dish is built on fragrant whole spices — cardamom, cloves, bay, cinnamon — and finished with saffron milk and fried onions. The sealed pot (dum cooking) creates steam that perfumes every grain of rice.

Great for: a weekend project, impressing guests, making enough to last multiple days.

Maqluba means 'upside down' in Arabic — the pot is inverted onto a platter to reveal a layered dish of chicken, rice, and vegetables. It's a showstopper when done correctly, and the technique is more approachable than it looks. The recipe includes all the timing and layering details you need to nail the unmoulding.

Great for: cooking something different and impressive, a celebratory family meal.