I Tried Ina Garten’s ‘Easiest Dinner’ Recipe – and It’s My New Favorite

It only requires three ingredients.

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Ina Garten may not be from the South (we wish she was), but she’s a fantastic cook, with tips and tricks that any home cook can appreciate. Her recipes, while sometimes a little unusual for us Southerners, are always special and inspiring, and you rarely need access to a Hamptons cheese shop or Parisian bakery to make them.

Case in point: a recipe she calls “the easiest dinner I know how to make.” This is a three-ingredient roast chicken dinner that has all the flavor and richness of a stuffed chicken breast, but without the acrobatics of slicing, stuffing, rolling and pinching the chicken to keep the filling at the inside of the meat.

How to Make Ina Garten’s 3-Ingredient Chicken Dinner

For this recipe, Garten explained in her Instagram Reel that you’ll need chicken breast, goat cheese, and fresh basil. One caveat: She calls for chicken breasts with the skin still on, and when I went to the store to buy the ingredients for this dinner, my grocery store didn’t have boneless skin-on chicken breasts. You may want to call ahead and ask your butcher if they can make some for you when you are ready to try this. I ended up using boneless skin-on chicken thighs, and it was very flavorful and tender.

The next steps couldn’t be simpler: remove the skin from the chicken breast and place a slice of goat cheese log on the chicken, followed by basil leaves. Pull the chicken skin over the cheese and basil and press down.

I’m not a fan of basil, so I replaced it with fresh parsley. You can really use any tender herb here, like sage, cilantro, or even chives. It’s all a matter of personal preference and what you think would pair well with goat cheese.

Garten used an herbed goat cheese, as did I, but with plain goat cheese you can expand your herb options a little further with great success. You can also look for flavored goat cheeses, including cheeses that are spiced or mixed with fig jam.

Once the chicken skin is back in place, brush the meat with a little olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Bake at 375°F for 30 to 40 minutes.

My slightly smaller chicken thighs were done in precisely 30 minutes, but thicker breasts may last a little longer in this cooking range. Finally, cover the cooked chicken breasts with foil and let them rest for about 10 minutes before slicing and eating.

“It’s as easy as eating dinner,” Garten said in her video, and I can’t deny her statement. This is a dinner I will turn to again and again.

What I liked about this “simplest dinner”

I really like stuffed chicken breast recipes. A go-to dinner for me when I’m too tired to follow a recipe is blue cheese stuffed chicken breasts, served with pear slices sautéed in butter. It’s so comforting and I’m never in the mood for it. But asparagus-stuffed chicken, even chicken cordon bleu, is always a welcome dinner at my house.

Garten’s Dinner simplifies the stuffing by placing the ingredients under the skin of the chicken. Opening up a chicken breast and poking some cheese or topping into the pocket may not be one of my favorite cooking techniques. If the bag isn’t big enough, everything will leak out. If you’re not nourished enough, you feel cheated.

This method is much quicker and simpler, and you can put lots of cheese and herbs on top. I finished my dinner with half an ear of oven roasted corn. And since I have plenty of goat cheese left, I’m already planning to make this dish again this weekend.

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