Cranberry Chicken

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Tangy and pleasantly tart, this Cranberry Chicken is a delicious way to boost any chicken with a bit of extra flavor! Feel free to use this cranberry chicken recipe alone, or just serve it simply over rice instead!

Why not learn all about Worcestershire sauce for this recipe? Or make some Chicken Fricassee instead?

Cranberry Chicken

Most chicken marinade recipes usually only contain a few basic ingredients, resulting in a dependable, if a bit bland, flavor profile.

This recipe, though, ensures you get a whopping great pile of cranberry flavor, as well as some super dark and rich purple coloring in the meat.

Remember that this marinade contains plenty of soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce, so you probably don’t really need to season it whatsoever; it is probably pretty salty already!                  

Cranberry Chicken Ingredients

Make sure you look at the recipe card at the very bottom for the exact amounts so that you know exactly what to buy for this recipe.

• 4 large chicken breasts skinless, boneless
• one 348 ml can whole berry cranberry sauce
• 3/4 cup Catalina salad dressing
• 1 tablespoon onion soup mix

How To Make Cranberry Chicken

• In a resealable plastic bag, like a Ziploc, combine all the ingredients together along with the chicken breasts

• Seal the bag and refrigerate for 8 hours, or overnight, turning once over to help ensure even coverage

• Place the chicken and marinade in an ungreased baking pan and place in the oven uncovered for 1 hour, cooking at 350 Fahrenheit

• Cook until the chicken reaches a safe internal temperature of 165 Fahrenheit and then serve over rice

How To Serve & Eat Your Cranberry Chicken?

This recipe is more of a guideline for how to prepare a specific type of tart and salty marinade that makes for some really great chicken.

While the easiest, and maybe best, option is to just serve this over some plain boiled or steamed rice, you could do so much more with it!

This chicken would go wonderfully in a holiday-themed pie: combine some cooked cranberry chicken with a little bit of turkey stuffing and some other typical pie ingredients in a pre-baked pie crust, top it with a pastry crust and bake until the inside is hot and the outside is crusty and delicious.

You could even use this exact same recipe for some holiday turkey breasts, serving it as the main centerpiece for your Thanksgiving or Christmas meals! A big added benefit of this is you don’t have to prepare cranberry sauce as well!

Could You Use Other Pieces Of Chicken Instead Of Just Breasts?

This recipe calls for chicken breasts, both because of the fact that they cook a lot faster and because they can take up marinades really easily.

However, if you aren’t a fan of chicken breasts, you can easily use other chicken pieces instead.

For example, a good replacement would be the ever-dependable chicken thigh. Fattier, richer, and with much more flavor, the only problem with chicken thighs is that they can take a long time to cook, as well as not being as good as chicken breasts at absorbing marinades.

If you want to use chicken thighs or any other dark meat, definitely veer towards leaving your marinade overnight to give it as long as possible for the marinade to work its way into the meat.

In fact, you could even cut some thin, interlocking cuts into the thigh to help the marinade get into the meat more easily.

When it comes to cooking your cranberry chicken, you might want to keep an extra eye on your chicken because it will probably take a good deal longer to cook in the oven, depending on whether or not you cut slashes into the thighs.

The best thing is to shoot for an hour’s cooking time, but keep it going if the chicken hasn’t yet reached 165, turning it occasionally to avoid the marinade burning.

For even better texture, keep cooking the chicken until it reaches 185 Fahrenheit internal temperature. At this temp, the chicken will start to fall apart like you barbequed it and will taste even better!

Looking for more delicious Chicken recipes? Try these out:

• Lemon Garlic Chicken

• Buttery Garlic & Herb Chicken and Potatoes

• Jerk Chicken

Happy Cooking

Love,

Karlynn

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