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The easiest Greek grilled chicken that’s perfect for weeknight dinners! I serve mine with a side salad and roasted potatoes but this would be great with just about anything!
Grilling season is upon us.
Summery, simple to make dinners are always my jam.
Recipes like this one and my simple asian grilled chicken pack a flavorful punch but are easy enough to toss together on the weekend for an easy weekly dinner.
You can even marinate the chicken and freeze it immediately. Defrost the chicken in the fridge and then just toss it on the grill – easy peasy!
Greek Grilled Chicken is marinated with freshly squeezed lemon juice, chopped herbs, like thyme, rosemary, and oregano, minced garlic, a little olive oil, and red wine vinegar. Herby, light, and citrusy chicken that’s sure to please everyone.
Simple dinners with tender, marinated chicken FTW.
Made this for my family tonight. Even my picky son ate the chicken!!!!!!! YAY!!!!! Will be doing this one more often. Delicious!!
Ingredients for greek chicken marinade
- Boneless Skinless Chicken: Use chicken breasts, chicken thighs, or even tenders. Whatever you typically prefer. You can evens bone-in chicken breasts if you prefer. They just typically take a little longer on the grill.
- Spices: You’ll need kosher salt, black pepper, dried oregano, and cayenne pepper. If you don’t want much heat swap the cayenne pepper for paprika. Feel free to use fresh oregano if you have that on hand, just double the amount listed.
- Herbs: You’ll need fresh rosemary and fresh thyme.
- Cloves Garlic: I use about a tablespoon of fresh garlic, so about 3 cloves.
- Fresh Lemon juice: you’ll need freshly squeezed for this.
- Olive Oil: a few glugs of good olive oil for the herbs and spices to adhere to the chicken and to keep it moist. I avoid extra virgin olive oil, since we’ll be cooking his on a high heat gas grill.
- Red Wine Vinegar: is the acid this recipe needs.
What to serve with your greek grilled chicken
- Mediterranean Pasta Salad: Loaded with fresh arugula, sun-dried tomatoes, marinated artichoke hearts, pine nuts, kalamata olives, basil pesto and so much more! You could even dice the grilled chicken and toss it right into the salad! The flavors would pair beautifully.
- Spring Couscous Salad with Basil Vinaigrette: A simple spring salad with feta cheese, fresh parsley, blanched peas, and chopped walnuts and drizzled with the most delicious homemade basil vinaigrette.
- Lentil Stuffed Zucchini Boats: brown lentils and sautéed spinach loaded into whole zucchinis topped with mozzarella cheese and baked until melty.
- Sautéed Mixed Vegetables: a corn and zucchini sauté with fresh peppers. Just toss it in a skillet and season. Perfect for a cookout!
- Cucumber Chickpea Salad with Feta: A Mediterranean-inspired salad with fresh herbs, cucumbers, greens and protein-packed chickpeas. The dressing is lemony and so refreshing and pairs well with the grilled chicken.
- Moroccan Chickpea Quinoa Power Salad: Color, texture, and crunch, this salad has it all. I love the combination of carrots, parsley, dates, and golden raisins. This would make one super protein packed meal!
- Summer Tomato and Cucumber Quinoa Salad: Similar to tabbouleh but made with quinoa.
Other Chicken recipe to try:
- Simple Asian Grilled Chicken
- Authentic Chicken Shish Tawook
- Grilled Romaine Chicken Caesar Cobb Salad
- Best Peruvian Chicken
- Spatchcock Peri Peri Chicken
The Easiest Greek Grilled Chicken
Equipment
Ingredients
- 1 ½ pounds boneless skinless chicken breasts thighs or tenders
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
- ½ teaspoon fresh rosemary chopped
- ½ teaspoon dried oregano
- 1 teaspoon fresh thyme or ½ teaspoon dried
- ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 1 tablespoon minced garlic
- 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice not the stuff in a bottle!
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
Instructions
- COMBINE: In a small bowl, combine the salt, pepper, rosemary, oregano, thyme, cayenne, minced garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, and red wine vinegar.
- MARINADE: Place the chicken breasts in a large zip top bag. Pour the prepared marinade on top, zip the bag and give it a good shake until the chicken is evenly coated. Allow the chicken to marinate for 10 minutes – 2 hours. I like to stick to a 30 minute marinade if possible.
- PREHEAT: an indoor or outdoor grill to medium-high heat. Spray the grates with nonstick cooking spray to keep the white meat from sticking. Make sure to have a two-zone fire. One side should be for searing while the other is for cooking the chicken all the way through.
- COOK: Place the chicken breasts on the searing side and let cook. Discard any leftover marinade. Cook the chicken breasts for 4-6 minutes per side, moving to cooler zone to finish cooking through once seared. Remove when the internal temperature reaches 160ºF, letting the chicken rest (carry over cooking) will allow the chicken to hit 165 degrees F.
- SERVE: garnished with chopped parsley if desired.
Notes
- The fresh rosemary can be replaced with ¼ teaspoon dried rosemary.
- Boneless skinless chicken thighs are a good sub for the chicken breasts. I have not tested this recipe with bone-in chicken thighs/breasts so please use your best judgment in terms of cooking time!
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Like This? Leave a comment & rating below!
I have used this marinade for pork loin and pork tenderloin many times. It’s delicious!
I marinated the chicken for 30 minutes – 1 hour. The chicken grilled up beautifully! The marinade gave the meat a very flavorful and juicy result. I sliced the breasts and put them on pita bread with a homemade tzatziki sauce, crumbled feta, chopped tomatoes, and kalamata olives. Would have been good to have some baby spinach or spring greens for some crunch. The teenagers and husband LOVED IT!
Made this for my family tonight. Even my picky son ate the chicken!!!!!!! YAY!!!!! Will be doing this one more often. Delicious!!
Love this recipe! The first time I made it I used bone-in, skin-n chicken thighs and tonight I’m using boneless skinless breasts. Can’t wait to see how they turn out.
Thanks:)
This came out great. Thank you!
The flavors in your recipe are wonderfully balanced and perfect! Reminds me of the chicken I order at my favorite Greek restaurant. The first time I made this, I followed the instructions exactly, using fresh herbs where indicated. Even though I only marinated for 30 minutes, I still found my chicken breasts to be tough and dry because of how acidic the marinade is. The next time I made it, I used the zest of 2 large lemons instead of lemon juice and added a splash of red wine vinegar while they were on the grill rather than marinating with it. The flavor came out just as amazing as the first time, but my chicken stayed moist and tender. I served it with lemon basmati rice, roasted asparagus, and homemade roasted red pepper hummus as an appetizer.
Lovely! I’m on to it…. Dinner any one?
Can you leave the chicken to marinate overnight?
No, unfortunately, because of the high acid content of this recipe, I don’t suggest leavening the chicken to marinate overnight. The acid would cook the chicken too much!
This was outstanding! I cooked it on my coat iron griddle pan on the gas grill.
Super yum. My chicken hater even ate it.
This chicken marinade is AWESOME! We have been using it for about 5 or 6 months now and have rarely cooked our chicken with out it. I did make some changes, but the original is the PERFECT chicken marinade! We usually double the recipe so we have leftovers for work or chicken salads the next night. Here’s the changes: 3 tbs of lime juice for the double recipe in addition to the called for standard 3 tbs of lemon juice – from the bottle (not ideal, but fine with us), 1 tbs of balsamic instead of red wine vinegar and 1 tbs of white wine vinegar to double the recipe. That’s it… maybe some extra garlic ;-). THANK YOU for this easy go to, over and over, go to chicken recipe.
My family LOVED this! Couple changes I made:
I sliced the chicken breasts against the grain to make 1 inch strips. I marinated the strips for about 45 mins. I cooked the chicken on the stove in a non-stick grill pan (no oil–there seemed to be enough in the marinade). I poured any leftover marinade on top. I cooked the chicken for about 10-15 minutes, pushing it around the pan and turning pieces over as necessary. Near the end, I added crushed, roasted and salted almonds and some bacon pieces.
I served the chicken on top of quinoa and broccoli. My family was blown away.
So you made a completely different dish.
Delicious!
i could get on board with easy dinner such as this one 🙂