Honey Garlic Chicken is an epic 12 minute chicken breast recipe with a magic 5 ingredient Honey Garlic Sauce! This is a terrific back pocket quick dinner idea for busy nights that’s made with pantry staples. It’s quite amazing how so few ingredients can transform into such a tasty sauce for chicken!
BONUS: This can be made with any protein – beef, pork, lamb, shrimp/prawns, even tofu!
Honey Garlic Chicken Breast
This sauce for chicken breast is a variation of my Honey Garlic Salmon which has been popular with readers for many years.
If I were ever to do a summary of my top 5 Most Used Sauces, Honey Garlic Sauce would probably be right at the top of the list. I love it because it requires so few ingredients that are pantry staples, and when simmered with a seared protein in a skillet so it becomes all bubbly and syrupy…. oh WOW.
It’s just DA BOMB!!! ( <– Who talks like that at my age???! I do. Only in extenuating circumstances. Excitement over crazy delicious secret-weapon sauce falls under this category. 😎)
Terrific quick chicken breast recipe
Though I personally have a preference for chicken thighs over chicken breast (better flavour, juicier!), I find myself putting chicken breast in my shopping trolley week after week.
Thus over the years, I’ve built up a wide variety of quick and easy chicken breast recipes – and this Honey Garlic Chicken is one of my favourite quick dinners that I find myself making over and over again.
What you need
See? I told you that you’d have everything! 😉
How to make Honey Garlic Chicken Breast
Split chicken breast in half – so 2 breasts makes 4 pieces;
Dust chicken with flour (gives the chicken a slight crust so the sauce clings to it better!)
Sear chicken, add butter, garlic, vinegar, soy sauce, honey.
Simmer until the sauce thickens. Turn chicken to coat in the amazing honey garlic sauce.
And THAT’S IT!
Want to BBQ it? Use this Grilled Honey Soy Chicken recipe instead.
Notice how the sauce is clinging to the surface? That’s because we dusted the chicken with flour so when it’s pan fried, it creates a crust.
What to serve with Honey Garlic Chicken Breast
There’s enough sauce to drizzle over veggies and soak into rice or whatever you serve it with. The flavour is strong enough such that you don’t need loads – a bit goes a long way!
It’s pictured above with Cauliflower Rice (tossed with a squeeze of lemon, parsley, salt and pepper) with Cucumber Salad on the side.
Even though it’s got soy sauce in the Honey Garlic Sauce, this doesn’t taste specifically Asian-y. But it’s versatile enough that it will go just as well with Fried Rice as it will with a Macaroni Salad or even Mac and Cheese. Yes really! Try it once and you’ll understand (it only takes 12 minutes, you’ve got the time!!) – Nagi x
Honey Garlic Chicken breast recipe
WATCH HOW TO MAKE IT
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Honey Garlic Chicken Breast
Ingredients
- 500g / 1 lb chicken breast , boneless and skinless (2 pieces)
- Salt and pepper
- 1/4 cup flour (Note 1)
- 3 1/2 tbsp (50g) unsalted butter (or 2 1/2 tbsp olive oil)
- 2 garlic cloves , minced
- 1 1/2 tbsp apple cider vinegar (or white or other clear vinegar)
- 1 tbsp soy sauce , light or all purpose (Note 2)
- 1/3 cup honey (or maple syrup)
Instructions
- Cut the breasts in half horizontally to create 4 steaks in total. Sprinkle each side with salt and pepper.
- Place flour in a shallow dish. Coat chicken in flour and shake off excess.
- Melt most of the butter in a large skillet over high heat – hold back about 1 tsp for later.
- Place chicken in skillet and cook for 2 – 3 minutes until golden. Turn and cook the other side for 1 minute.
- Turn heat down slightly to medium high.
- Make a bit of room in the pan and add garlic and top with remaining dab of butter. Stir garlic briefly once butter melts.
- Add vinegar, soy sauce and honey. Stir / shake pan to combine. Bring sauce to simmer, then simmer for 1 minute or until slightly thickened.
- Turn chicken to coat in sauce. If the sauce gets too thick, add a touch of water and stir.
- Remove from stove immediately. Place chicken on plates and drizzle over remaining sauce.
Recipe Notes:
Nutrition Information:
Honey Garlic Chicken breast recipe originally published February 2018, it has since been improved with new photos and video but no change to recipe (I wouldn’t dare, readers love it as it is!).
More quick and easy chicken breast recipes
Life of Dozer
The fish down at the beach taunt Dozer endlessly, splashing around and leaping out of the water. Sometimes he’ll be in the water swimming non stop chasing fish for an hour! It’s brilliant – no effort required on my part!
So I had my doubts that a recipe with so few ingredients would be so good – but having tried many recipes from this website and reading the dozer stories, I thought I would try it! I made it with chicken and then tofu because it was sooooo good! Thank you for sharing!
Can you freeze leftovers ?
I come back to this recipe often when I need a quick and tasty mid-week dish. So good! Brilliant that you have the other proteins as well, I love the tofu version!
I made this recipe tonight and it was delicious! I did the chicken the cucumber salad and the cauliflower rice. Thank you so much for sharing it with us.
I don’t usually leave reviews unless I feel like I have something of value to add, and I always make Nagi’s recipes exactly as written and love them! Seriously, this blog is my short-notice dinner lifeline.
Anyways, tonight I started making this around 11 PM after an evening of cramming. Only, once the chicken was cooking in the pan, I realized I had like, maybe a tablespoon and a half of honey, so I rushed to the pantry to grab either maple syrup or golden syrup… Which I turned out to be out of 🥲 So I used brown sugar to make up the difference. Then I opened the fridge and discovered that someone had used the last of the soy sauce, so I didn’t have that either 😅A quick emergency google led me to using one teaspoon of white miso paste and one teaspoon of balsamic vinegar (both appear as suggested substitutions and I couldn’t decide which to go with, so I combined them).
Lo and behold, it’s still delicious!! I can’t necessarily say whether it’s *as good* as the recipe as written, but what I can tell you from my harrowing journey is that it’s forgiving 😂 So if you’re reading this recipe and thinking “dang, I’m out of ____”, all might not be lost!
Anyways, thank you for the recipe as always, and next time I’ll come to the kitchen actually prepared 😂
This was SO delicious and so so easy! We had 2 couples come over and I prepped everything in advance, including flouring the chicken and measuring all the ingredients into a measuring cup, so I just had to throw the chicken in then everything else as directed and everyone loved it! I mean they really loved it! Can’t wait to make it again for others.
OMG HELLOOOO! What an AMAZING recipe! I used chicken tenders and my never-eats-anything daughter ASKED FOR SECONDS! I’m so utterly grateful for your sharing this gem of a recipe. Thankyou!
Oh my goodness, this was absolutely incredible! Husband kept raving throughout the meal and we stuffed ourselves. Definitely will be on regular rotation! There were some things I did differently based on personal preference. I doubled the quantity of the sauce except the honey as we don’t like sauces that are too sweet and also sprinkled in some spicy freshly ground pepper flakes in the sauce for an extra kick. It was a winner!
Made for an alternative at a New Year’s eve dinner. Did cut down the honey but it was a hit. Could you use arrowroot for GF substitute.
Delicious. I look for quick recipes and always ending up picking things too involved. This was fast and simple. I doubled the sauce because we’re saucy here, and served it with roast cubed sweet potato and a side salad. I’m absolutely going to make this again.
I’m sorry but wouldn’t make this again. Sauce was very thin and liquidy and looked nothing like the picture. and yes I followed this recipe to a T. The flour came right off after cooking the chicken also. I think the flour was an unnecessary step. Extremely overphotoshopped photo. The sauce was basically a honey sauce and nothing else. Will be trying another honey garlic chicken sauce next time.
Maybe chicken was overly wet? or too much flour was left on? or pan hadn’t been allowed to get hot enough? I’d give this technique another try because it really is a good process used in other recipes.
A simple sauce as advertised: it’s a quick 5 item, 12 min. recipe
The majority of people who have tried this recipe loved it. Please don’t be so negative and sour girl, cooking comes from the heart so that might have affected your cooking, wink 🙂
I’ve made this recipe many times now and it’s great. I used this sauce on Brussels sprouts and it is fantastic.
I substituted chicken nibbles for breasts and double dipped them in 00 flour. Great crispy coating on the chicken and they tasted finger licking goood!!
Husband asked for seconds. (That is not a thing in my household. 🙂 Thanks so much for the awesome recipe!
This recipe I made for my famliy and they loved it the sauce was really good with rice to clean it up
This was a very delicious recipe!! I did a gf version with gf flour. I also doubled the sauce ingredients so we had even extra sauce for drizzle. I did end up adding a cornstarch slurry to the sauce because I did a pound and a half of chicken and I wanted to have an allot of thick yummy sauce!! I typed with sesame seeds!! The family loved it!!
Quick, easy and so tasty. Toddler and fussy husband love this one.
Delicious- quick, simple meal. A winner – even our fussy eater cleaned the plate up.
This is soooo good and super simple. It’s definitely going into my dinner rotation! I made it exactly as written and it was wonderful. My husband and I both loved it!
I made this and it was sooo easy and it was delicious. My husband added a tiny bit of spicy chili paste to his serving and he said it was really good with and without it.