This recipe really should be called miracle chicken. With just four ingredients and five minutes prep, it must be one of the tastiest and easiest apricot chicken recipes I’ve ever made. With its signature sweet tang from the apricot nectar and tender juicy thigh fillets, our favourite apricot chicken can be served with steamed rice, couscous or roasted vegetables.
How to make apricot chicken: key tips
First trim off any excess fat from the thigh fillets and discard. After dredging the chicken in the flour, make sure you shake off any excess. The flour works as a subtle thickener so you don’t need too much. Also, make sure you seal the baking dish well with aluminium foil before baking. This creates steam that, along with the bubbling apricot sauce, gently cooks the chicken.
Key ingredients in our apricot chicken recipe
The secret to our 4-ingredient apricot chicken is a packet of French onion soup mix. This flavour bomb—when slowly cooked with the apricot nectar—slowly adds a rich and highly seasoned flavour. Chicken thighs are the perfect cut as they are hard to overcook, gently absorbing the amazing sweet and savoury flavours of the apricot and french onion mix.
French onion soup is an amazing cooking hack. Check out some other recipes that make use of this power packet in our French onion soup collection.
Additional recipe notes by the Australia’s Best Recipes team.
Ingredients
- 6 Woolworths Chicken Thigh Skinless Fillets
- 90g French onion soup mix
- 840g apricot nectar
- 1 cup plain flour to coat
Method
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Step 1Using non-stick cooking spray to coat a baking or casserole dish.
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Step 2Coat the chicken thigh fillets in flour and place in the dish.
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Step 3In a large jug, combine the soup packets and apricot nectar, mix well, then pour over chicken.
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Step 4Cover and bake at 180C for no longer than 90 minutes.
Recipe Notes
Serve with boiled rice or vegetables.
If you like the sound of this recipe, you might also like this Grilled Salmon with Blueberry Balsamic Sauce.
The history behind this retro favourite is pretty vague, but it appears that it hit the tables in both Australia and America in the mid 1970’s. Dehydrated French onion soup mix had been around since the early 1950’s and it wasn’t long after that that some unknown person discovered that, when mixed with sour cream, it made a simple yet super-tasty dip. It wasn‘t until a couple of decades later that the soup mix was added to chicken and apricot nectar to create what we now know as apricot chicken. Throughout the following years the Americans have strayed from the original recipe a bit with some recipes adding apricot jam and salad dressing to the mix. Australians have pretty much stuck to the original, although sometimes canned apricots halves are added.
Why use chicken thigh fillets?
Chicken thigh fillets are an often-underrated cut of chicken, but we at team Best Recipes love them. They have so much more flavour than chicken breasts and are a lot more forgiving. Forgiving is a word we cooks use a lot. It means that you don’t have to be too conscious of cooking times. Some cuts of meat can go from under-cooked to over-cooked in a couple of minutes. Other cuts, like chicken thighs, can cook past their due time and still be tender. In fact, it’s nearly impossible to overcook them. Chicken thighs are fattier than chicken breast and we all know that fat equals flavour. To add to the list of fine attributes, chicken thighs are cheaper to buy than breast fillets.
What is apricot nectar?
Apricots aren’t a very juicy fruit. Unlike oranges or apples, they can’t be juiced. Instead, they are pureed with water and sugar. The word nectar is used as the result tends to be thicker than juice. Apricot nectar became popular in the 1960’s and was used for more than just drinking. One standout use was in apricot nectar cake. This popular treat was made on a packet cake where the water was replaced with the nectar. Apricot nectar was also swirled through homemade ice cream and used as the base for cocktails or slushies.
What do I serve with apricot chicken?
This recipe is so simple you don’t want to spend too much time creating a side. While a lovely rice pilaf would work a treat, save it for another night. Instead serve with steamed rice, couscous or tender-crisp broccolini
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