French Onion Chicken Bake

A french onion chicken breast smothered in gruyere cheese and caramelized onions next to mashed potatoes.

5 — Votes 3 votes

French Onion Chicken Bake

This French Onion Chicken bake is incredibly decadent and delicious. Seared chicken gets nestled into a dutch oven with caramelized onions and red wine, topped with gruyere cheese and fresh thyme sprigs, and then baked to perfection! Serve the chicken atop creamy mashed potatoes for a date night-worthy meal.

Prep Time15

Cook Time1 45

Total Time2

Course: Dinner

Cuisine: American

Diet: Gluten Free

Servings: Servings

Author: Cassy Joy Garcia

Ingredients

11 tablespoons butter, divided
2 pounds yellow onions, thinly sliced
2 teaspoons salt, divided
1¼ pounds chicken breast cutlets
3 tablespoons flour
¼ teaspoon black pepper
½ cup chicken broth
¼ cup red wine
1 tablespoon fresh thyme, chopped
8 ounces gruyere cheese, shredded

Instructions

Add 8 tablespoons of butter to a heavy-bottomed pot over low heat, and once melted, add the sliced onions and sea salt. Stir to combine, place a lid on top, and let the onions wilt for 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes, take the lid off of the skillet and toss the onions in the butter. Turn the heat up to medium-low, and let the onions continue to caramelize, uncovered, for 45 minutes, scraping the pot and stirring the onions occasionally. Once caramelized, remove the onions from the pot, and set aside.
Preheat the oven to 375°F. Dust the chicken breasts with flour, salt, and pepper.
Turn the heat to medium-high, add 3 tablespoons of butter to the pot, and once melted, sear the chicken breasts for 3-4 minutes on each side, until a golden brown crust is formed. Remove the chicken from the pot and set aside.
Add the caramelized onions, red wine, and chicken broth to the pot, stirring to combine. Let the onion mixture simmer for 5-6 minutes, until slightly thickened and reduced. Then, nestle each chicken breast into the caramelized onion mixture, making sure to cover each piece of chicken with the onions. Top each piece of chicken with shredded gruyere cheese and a sprig of fresh thyme.
Bake for 10 minutes. Then let cool slightly, serve, and enjoy!

Notes

- Use chicken breasts instead - chicken breast cutlets are ideal here, but you can definitely use chicken breasts and either pound them to a half inch thickness or butterfly the chicken breasts to that same thickness.
- Nix the red wine - while the alcohol in the red wine will cook off, if you want to nix it completely, that's totally fine. Feel free to substitute for extra chicken broth!

- Make it dairy-free - this recipe is pretty dairy-heavy, so if you want to make it dairy-free, you'll need to make a couple of swaps. First, make sure your caramelized onions are cooked in olive oil (vs. butter), swap the butter used to sear the chicken for olive oil, and swap the gruyere cheese for a dairy-free version (there aren't a ton of these, but I found this dairy-free gruyere on an artisan vegan cheese website, or you may have good luck at your local grocery store).

- Make it grain-free - skip the flour dusting to make this recipe grain-free.

- Make it gluten-free - to make this recipe gluten-free, use a gluten-free flour in place of conventional. We use and love King Arthur's Measure for Measure gluten-free flour.

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