I shared this fun, flavorful stuffed chicken recipe 5 years ago and it’s still SUCH a hit with all of you. I hope you’re ready to get cooking in the kitchen and dancing while you do it.
What could be better than this easy goat cheese and spinach stuffed chicken breast recipe that’s made in one pan, takes only 30 minutes, is packed with protein, and is absolutely delicious?!
I paired this delicious spinach stuffed chicken with caramelized onions and mushrooms to give it extra savory flavor and OMG the result is out-of-this-world amazing. Feel free to serve the chicken as is or check out some of my favorite sides for pairing at the bottom of this post!
Ingredients in this goat cheese and spinach stuffed chicken
The best part about this easy spinach stuffed chicken recipe is that it requires minimal ingredients but the result is so delicious and feels a little fancy. Here’s what you’ll need:
- Chicken: we’re cooking up 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts for this recipe. Be sure they’re similar in size, about 4-6 ounces each.
- Olive oil: you’ll need this for cooking up the chicken and veggies.
- Vegetables: we’re using fresh spinach, an onion, and baby bella mushrooms in this recipe.
- Cheese: I love adding tangy goat cheese to the spinach mixture, but see below for additional options!
- Herbs & spices: you’ll need some garlic powder, fresh thyme, salt & black pepper. Looking for a kick of heat? Add some red pepper flakes to the filling!
- Optional: if you want to add a little deeper flavor get your balsamic vinegar ready for the onion and mushrooms.
Customize with your favorite cheese
Instead of goat cheese, I think cream cheese or shredded mozzarella cheese would be delicious mixed with the spinach! Just be sure to use a cheese that gets nice and creamy. You could also add a little parmesan cheese to the filling for extra savory, salty flavor!
Goat cheese and spinach stuffed chicken in 5 easy steps
This spinach stuffed chicken recipe is easier to make than most stuffed chicken breast recipes because instead of having to butterfly and pound a chicken breast down, you simply cut the chicken ‘hasselback style’ on top, stuff it with cooked spinach and goat cheese (or cheese of choice), then bake it in the oven and you’re done. Here’s how to make stuffed chicken breast:
- Prep your chicken. Use a sharp knife to cut 6 slits into the top of each chicken breast, making sure you don’t cut all the way through to the bottom of the chicken breast. Drizzle each chicken breast with a little olive oil then season with salt and pepper.
- Make the stuffing. Cook the spinach filling and then add to a bowl with goat cheese to combine the mixture.
- Stuff the chicken. Add cheese and spinach filling the slits in the chicken breast.
- Caramelize the onions. Cook your onions & mushrooms in the same skillet until the onions begin to caramelize, then make room for the chicken in the skillet.
- Bake & serve. Bake until chicken is completely cooked and a meat thermometer reads 165 degrees F, then serve it up!
How long do you cook stuffed chicken?
Since chicken breasts tend to vary in size, I recommend using a meat thermometer to make sure that the chicken breast is fully cooked; the temperature should read 165 degrees F. Typically, I cook my chicken breasts at 375 degrees F for anywhere from 20-30 minutes depending on their size.
Tools you’ll need: I recommend an oven-safe skillet and a meat thermometer for this recipe. No need for toothpicks as we’re not butterflying the chicken breasts so you won’t need them to hold the chicken together!
Storing tips
- In the fridge: store any leftovers chicken in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3-5 days.
- In the freezer: let the chicken completely cool, then wrap them well with plastic wrap and tinfoil before transferring them to the freezer for up to 3 months. No need to thaw, simply reheat the chicken in the oven at 325 degrees F for 20-30 minutes until heated through.
What to serve with this dish
- Moroccan Chickpea Quinoa Salad
- Greek Chickpea Chopped Salad
- Vegan Curried Chickpea Broccoli Salad
- Slow Cooker Mashed Potatoes
- Roasted Sweet Potato Cauliflower Salad
Get all of my side dishes here, and my salad recipes here!
I hope you love this spinach stuffed chicken breast recipe! If you make it be sure to leave a comment and a rating so I know how you liked it. Enjoy, xo!
Ambitious Kitchen
Cookbook
125 Ridiculously Good For You, Sometimes Indulgent, and Absolutely Never Boring Recipes for Every Meal of the Day
Goat Cheese & Spinach Stuffed Chicken Breast with Caramelized Onions + Mushrooms
Ingredients
- 4 chicken breasts (about 4-6 ounces each)
- 2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
- 4 cups organic spinach
- ½ teaspoon garlic powder
- 2 ounces goat cheese
- 1 white onion, sliced
- 8 ounces sliced baby bella mushrooms
- 1 teaspoon fresh thyme
- Optional: 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
- Freshly ground salt and pepper
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Use a sharp knife to hasselback each chicken breast, and cut 6 slits into the top of each breast, making sure you don’t cut all the way through to the bottom of the chicken breast. Drizzle each chicken breast with a little olive oil then season with salt and pepper. Set aside.
- Place a large ovenproof skillet over medium high heat and add in ½ tablespoon of olive oil. Add in spinach and season with garlic powder. Cook, stirring occasionally until spinach is fully wilted.
- Transfer cooked spinach to a medium bowl and add in goat cheese. Stir until well combined. Stuff each slit with the spinach/goat cheese mixture.
- Next add a 1 tablespoon of olive oil to the same skillet. Add in sliced onions, mushrooms, fresh thyme, optional balsamic vinegar and season with a little salt and pepper. Saute until onions begin to caramelize and mushrooms turn golden brown. Make room for the chicken by moving the mushrooms and onions to the sides of the skillet.
- Add chicken to the skillet, making sure there is a little bit of room between each chicken breast; you may need to rearrange the mushrooms and onions. Transfer to oven and bake for 20-30 minutes until the chicken is fully cooked and meat thermometer reads 165 degrees F. Serves 4.
Recipe Notes
Nutrition
Recipe by: Monique Volz // Ambitious Kitchen | Photography by: Eat Love Eats
This post was originally published on April 2nd, 2019, and republished on April 17th, 2024.
This sounds incredible!! Totally trying these!
It’s delicious! Hope you get a chance to try it 🙂
Will the cheese run out of the cuts to the bottom of the pan?
It shouldn’t! Check out the video for a great how-to guide 🙂
To cut a potato or chicken fillet this way, I put wooden skewers in front and behind the item just to limit the slit depth. Chicken fillets I cut slightly slantwise to increase the fill area. My French hosts used to slice whole fish in this way (e.g. trout) and use a chopped caper, parsley, lemon and butter mix for the filling, on a bed of Puy lentils. A similar dish of gigot of lamb use finely chopped garlic, mushrooms and butter to fill the slits, served on flageolet beans with a Béchamel sauce. The slit-fill-bake principle is super versatile, taking flavour right into the flesh while presenting a feast for the eyes.
Great tips! And yes, super versatile 🙂
I’ve been eating keto for a couple months, and my husband just made this for me for lunch, and it was SO amazingly good that it almost felt like a cheat meal. I ate this with an arugula salad, dressed simply with lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper, and I can’t wait to eat this for my weekday lunches. The goat cheese brings such a nice tanginess to the whole thing, while the caramelized veggies bring richness. Fantastic recipe.
Perfect! So glad he made this one for you. Sounds like a delicious lunch (and this one’s great for meal prep!)
I have just been looking through your recipe for your goat Cheese & Spinach Stuffed Chicken Breast
I am looking forward to making this over the weekend for my family
Great! Hope you love it.
This is a winner. Easy enough for weeknights and good enough for company. Served it with a kale salad with mango and cashews, and a peanut dressing from this site. Kudos all around.
So happy to hear that, Tim! Glad you’re finding some amazing recipes here.
Soooo delicious!!! This was a great way to kick off my new low carb lifestyle. Doesn’t even feel like a diet when you’re eating like that!!
I’ll never skimp on flavor here 😉 glad you found this one for dinner!
Wow this recipe is delicious! My husband and I couldn’t stop raving about it as we were eating it. Definitely saving this recipe!
So happy to hear that! Such a great weeknight dinner 🙂
Just like another reviewer, we could not stop talking about how delicious this was as we ate it. It’s incredible enough to be a fancy “date night in” dish, but also simple enough to be a regular weeknight dinner.
Love that! Perfect for date night 🙂 so glad you enjoyed!
I absolutely love this recipe. The first time I made it, I accidentally used honey goat cheese. I made it again using regular goat cheese. It’s better with the honey cheese.
So glad you love this one! Honey goat cheese actually sounds delicious – a little sweet & savory 🙂
Made this for the first time tonight and can’t wait to make it again. This will definitely a regular for me and my husband!!
Love that! One of our favorite weeknight meals too 🙂
Made this last night and it was a hit! So easy and healthy but also comforting and satisfying. After baking I removed the chicken and added a splash of red wine and a tsp of grainy mustard to the carmelized mushrooms and onions which created a nice pan sauce for the chicken! Thanks for always being one of my go-to blogs for awesome content 🙂
forgot my rating!
Yum great idea with the red wine sauce! Thanks for your note, Lindsey!
Good morning! I made this for dinner last night. Recipe was easy to follow (dish was extremely easy to make) and the result was delicious! I used cream cheese – as it was what I had on hand. VERY GOOD!
YUM sounds perfect! So happy you loved this one!
Very simple recipe with few ingredients – and of course very tasty too!
Absolutely! Glad you enjoyed 🙂
This dish was fantastic! Everyone in my family loved it, which is rare. The stuffing was healthy and delicious and the recipe was simple and easy to follow!
Amazing! So happy to hear that!
I am a new cook although retired (professionally). I say, “new”, although I have been cooking straightforward stuff for decades, including the Thanksgiving turkey, and squash, and such. My go to site was not this one, because I didn’t know about this one! Procured a high quality stand mixer at C’mas for myself, and that opens up a whole new world of possibilities. Trouble is, smoke started coming out the back the last time I kneaded a 2 loaf recipe. That will inhibit anyone’s kitchen experiments. Really wanted to experiment with GF for my wife, but now she is complaining there are too many carbs.The kids don
Anyway… this recipe is terrific. Everyone loved it. My daughter (16 years old) loved helping. I doubled the recipe (keeping my fingers crossed) so there would be extra for lunches. It all disappeared in just a couple of days.
As with all of the recipes here this is one of the better ones so far. A crowd pleaser! It’s easier than it looks, which is another great plus.
(Sorry this comment is so long.)
Hi Lou! So happy you’re finding recipes here that you and the family love 🙂 this is one of my favorite dinners, too. Thanks for your note!
My family loved this recipe! It was a perfect way to add lots of vegetables into a weeknight dinner.
Absolutely! Glad everyone enjoyed 🙂
We loved this recipe, my 17 yr old son especially! I used cream cheese instead of goat cheese but I think the goat cheese would be just as good>
So happy to hear that! Yes, either are delicious 🙂
I made this tonight for my family and it came out just like the picture! Everyone loved it. The goat cheese was a hit! I served it with roasted potatoes and Brussel sprouts. A perfect meal. Thank you Monique ☺️❤️
Amazing! So happy to hear that 🙂
Sorry to sound ignorant, but how many “normal” calories is this? 239kcal is above my pay grade!
It’s the same as regular calories! 🙂
This was delicious! I loved cutting the slits in the top. I hate making slits in the side and everything falls out. This worked perfectly!! We will definitely be making again. Also, so much easier than I was expecting!
Absolutely! Everything stays in super well 🙂 glad you loved this one!
Made this for dinner last night and it was delicious! The goat cheese is a major game-changer. All components of this meal create the perfect balance of tastiness. Thanks for another fantastic recipe!
So happy to hear that! One of our fav dinners, too 🙂
I forgot to add the thyme and it was still very good! This dish gave me a great excuse to use my oven safe skillet for it’s intended purpose. I added a bit more goat cheese at the end b/c i love it so. Served with baked sweet potato and broiled asparagus. Great combo.
Love it! Such a great dinner!
So easy and delicious. Love all your recipes I’ve tried so far!!
I have made this recipe at least 3 times, it is AMAZING. Such a perfect balance of savory and a creamy bite from the goat cheese. Assembly is fairly easy, I found that using a pairing knife yielded the most control in the size of the slits in chicken. I’ve made this recipe where the ingredients didn’t all fit, which worked out great as meal prep for another day! All the veggies were there, just have to toss in a protein (ground turkey, a flakey fish, even another chicken breast). Love love this recipe!
Perfect! So glad you love it!
Delicious! I didn’t get the onions to fully caramelized, and I was left with too much liquid at the end (maybe the chicken), but I’ll make it again!
Glad you enjoyed regardless! The onions might just need a bit more time.
Simply delicious, nutricious and easy recipe!
Glad you enjoyed!
Super easy to make and comes out delicious!
So glad you love it!
l want to do that . I want to be healthy free stuff . Thank you so much . Love Megan Nicole Moore
Enjoy!
Aw I was really hoping this would have turned out better. Even with my chicken breasts being 8oz, the 20 minutes in the oven was too long and they turned out dry and chewy. Also i didn’t find the chicken or the stuffing too be very flavorful. The onions and sauce were very tasty though. Better luck next time.
Sorry to hear that! Does your oven by chance run hot? For 8oz chicken breasts 20 minutes shouldn’t overcook them. Some more salt & pepper to taste should help. otherwise try out my jalapeño popper stuffed chicken 🙂
This recipe was very good! The liquid from the spinach and mushrooms kept the chicken from getting dry, and the flavors were amazing! We added a fig balsamic vinegar to the chicken before we baked it and then a fresh drizzle when it came out of the oven. Would definitely make again!
So happy you loved this one, McKenna! And yummm that fig balsamic sounds amazing 🙂
Delicious! I LOVE goat cheese, and the cheese spinach mixture is so good! Husband strongly dislikes mushrooms but has been really liking the onions and mushrooms together. We paired it with your Roasted Garlic Pesto Potatoes with Arugula. Thank you for the recipe!
Yay! So glad that he’s been enjoying the mushrooms in here 🙂 And yummm that’s a great side for this one!
What a wonderful recipe! So delicious and beautiful to look at! Since I didn’t have fresh spinach, I used frozen instead… steamed it, then added the cream cheese/mozzarella mixture to it. Worked very well.
Absolutely loved the caramelized onions and mushrooms and the tasty stuffed chicken. You mention a “sauce” for the chicken to cook in. I also see a liquid/sauce in your photo of this dish. I wanted that sauce, but when I made it, there was none. Where does the liquid come from? Should I add some chicken broth to the pan before cooking?
So happy you loved it, Laura! There’s some moisture from the onions, mushrooms and balsamic vinegar (what I call the “sauce”) but feel free to add some chicken broth or even just a splash of water if you want it to be saucier. Sorry if that was unclear!
This is a super easy and savory dish! I have never had goat cheese so I subbed for ricotta and it still turned out just as good. I served my dish with brussel sprouts along with the whites and mushrooms suggested. So good and my family loved it as well.
I’m a huge fan of goat cheese so I knew there was no way I wasn’t going to love this recipe. My chicken breasts were somewhat flat so instead of slicing them hasselback style, I butterflied them, stuffed them, browned them and continued on with the rest of the recipe. I will definitely make this again.
That’s such a good way to do it! Happy to hear you loved it 🙂
What a delicious dinner! And easy to make but looks/tastes like it wasn’t! Thank you so much for this keeper.
So glad it was easy and that you loved it, Michelle!
This was fabulous – and easy as per the instructions and made for especially easy cleanup – all one pan! We topped it off with a little grated Asiago and did drizzle the chicken with a balsamic glaze (de Neigris from Costco – Canada) prior to cooking. Definitely make again!
Many thanks for another great recipe!
Woohoooo I’m so glad you loved it! And balsamic glaze sounds amazing on here 😍
What does “hassleback” mean? Thanks.
Hi, there! It’s when you make cuts across something multiple times. You may have seen hasselback potatoes!
I made the recipe as except I used herbed goat cheese from Trader Joe’s. Husband,sons, and grandson loved it! It was a big hit! I look forward to making it again!
Oh that sounds amazing! SO happy you all loved it 🙂
A favorite to make, ( I skip the oil and use a bit of spray or saute veggies in broth to save a few calories for us, I just am accostomed to cooking that way now) sometimes I use reduced fat feta also, but goat cheese is wonderful here. Like the preperation method, great for company dinner.
This recipe is scrumptious – I used garlic and herb goat cheese, so I didn’t need the thyme. It is easy to make and the chicken stays moist.
Amazing dish. I doubled the amount of goat cheese and spinach as I had bigger chicken breasts. Absolutely delish.
Great call. Glad you loved it, Sarah!
Sorry, but this didn’t do it for me. The reviews were so great, but I found it lacking in flavor. So disappointed as I served it to guests. At least the rest of the meal was a winner!
Could you do this with thighs?
This is a staple when we want a low-carb but filling meal! My husband won’t do goat cheese, so I sub cream cheese with a little shredded gruyere and it comes out wonderfully. I always want more of the balsamic veggies, so I squeeze as many as I can in the pan 🙂
excellent – so glad you both loved this recipe and it turned out great 🙂
This recipe was such a tasty weeknight surprise! Really great flavors from simple healthy ingredients, will definitely be part of the weekly rotation!
Yummy & delicious. Didn’t have spinach but had bottled basil pesto and worked great as a substitute. Will definitely make again
I followed this recipe exactly and I’m not sure if it’s because my chicken breasts were pretty big, but I probably could have doubled the spinach and goat cheese filling. They came out a little bland. Over all it’s a good, healthy recipe and I will make it again.
It definitely could’ve been the size of your chicken breasts if you didn’t get a good amount of filling in every bite! Feel free to double the filling next time if you have bigger pieces of chicken, and add a little extra garlic powder and/or salt if you’d like.
EXCELLENT! I make this every other month like clockwork, delicious, for quite a while now! It is a hit.
Love that!!
We’ve made this recipe 6+ times and its always a hit! super easy to make, the onions add an amazing amount of flavor to a simple recipe. I’ve forgotten to pickup goat cheese a couple times and cream cheese works fine, too!
Oh my gosh! I made this tonight and it was delicious! Even my picky Daughter & Grandson (especially him) loved it! I only used 3 chicken breasts & made a few little tweaks based on the ingredients I had on-hand. I steamed the spinach in the microwave, added thin, slivered white mushrooms, then added maybe 2-3 tablespoons of garlic & herb goat cheese. I cooked the chicken most of the way in my cast iron skillet with maybe a tablespoon of EVOO and turned frequently. I stuffed the mixture in the slits. I placed some sliced red & yellow grape tomatoes on top and added just a small amount of shredded mozzarella & freshly grated Parmesan cheese. I covered the skillet and baked for another 20 minutes or so. It was absolutely amazing! I served it with your green beans with crushed almonds, garlic, seasalt & cracked peppercorns.
Sounds like such a great dinner! Glad it was a hit!