This easy, six-ingredient Roasted Lemon Pepper Chicken is incredibly juicy and flavorful, and is ready to eat in 35 minutes!

Note to self:  When coming up with new recipes, try to remember where you wrote down the ingredients.  I spent about 15 minutes looking for this recipe before I finally found it somewhere on my phone.

In order to keep things organized, I have a large notebook for jotting down ideas, and it tends to migrate from one part of the house to another.  I’m not sure who keeps moving the notebook, as I’m fairly certain my house isn’t haunted.  I say “fairly” because my brother-in-law is convinced (joking) that we have ghosts in our house.

Jump to Recipe!

That last sentence probably needs an explanation.  Right after Casey and I got married, I discovered that he is a fan of certain horror movies.  (When I say “horror” I’m specifically referring to the more thriller/psychological type of horror.  Examples:  The Sixth Sense, Insidious, The Ward, The Village, etc.  Neither of us are fans of movies that are over the top gross or just frightening to be frightening without having a good story line.)  Anyway, he convinced me to watch some of these movies with him, and I enjoyed most of them.  The one that really got me was Insidious.  I still look over my shoulder every time I think about that movie, and probably shouldn’t be writing about it when it’s still dark outside (haha).

On a couple of occasions, we invited Casey’s brother and his wife to come over and watch some of these movies with us.  (This was purely for our own amusement at seeing them jump at certain scenes; we’re so terrible.)  One evening my brother-in-law made the observation that our home is the perfect setting for a horror film.  Our house has two stories and the only bedrooms are upstairs.  They are both attic rooms with sloped ceilings, and there is a stairway leading downstairs located directly between the two rooms.  Casey’s brother remarked that every time he stands at the bottom of the stairway he half expects to see a dark figure move silently from one room to another across the landing at the top of the stairs.  (I think he has an overactive imagination.)  Our house also has a lot of interior woodwork, which causes it to feel darker overall than some homes.  Personally, I love the wood.

For all my jokes about an overactive imagination, I once made the terrible mistake of watching a horror movie by myself when Casey was out of town on a business trip.  I usually go to bed fairly early, but on that particular night I decided to stay up late watching a movie called Oculus.  If you’re a fan of horror, you will probably like Oculus.  However, if those kinds of movies terrify you, DO NOT watch it alone.  (I am not responsible for what happens to you if you ignore my advice.)  Well, I finished said movie around 11:00 and realized immediately that sleep wasn’t going to be in the cards that night.  I quite literally sat up in bed with the lights on for most of the night, with the bedroom door locked and the creepy stairway landing on the other side of the door.  It’s hilarious now, and I’m sitting here laughing at myself, but at the time I was completely freaked out.  I will never, ever make that mistake again.

Anyway, what was I going to talk about today?  Roasted chicken?  Maybe I should have posted about some happy, brightly colored, baked goods instead.  Wait a minute, I just heard a thump upstairs.  *goes to investigate*

Actually, no, I’m not going to look into any thumping sounds.  If you’ve ever watched a scary movie, you know that the bad things ALWAYS happen when people decide to investigate strange noises or walk into a dark alley shouting, “Hello?  Anybody there?”  I mean, come on, who actually does that?  A more accurate representation would show Katherine running away from said creepy alley as fast as possible while dialing 911 on her cell phone and preparing to defend herself with her epic ninja fighting skills.

I’ve completely derailed again.  My apologies.  In regards to the recipe I’m about to share:  When it comes to cooking chicken breasts in the oven, in the past I’ve always tended toward longer cooking times at lower temperatures.  No longer.  I recently stumbled across a few articles suggesting that the tastiest chicken is acquired by roasting it at 450 degrees Fahrenheit for a shorter time period.  I was curious, and so I gave it a try with this lemon pepper chicken.  What resulted was some of the juiciest and most flavorful chicken I’ve ever made, so I had to post it here.  Another bonus of roasting chicken at higher temperatures is that dinner is ready a lot faster.  This recipe only takes about 35 minutes from start to finish.

Now that you’re thinking about horror movies and roasted chicken, have a great Monday! 😉

~K in the Kitchen