Easy One-Dish Baked Pesto Chicken and Vegetables

Easy one-dish baked pesto chicken and vegetables. Just five minutes prep time and you can do other stuff while it’s cooking in the oven.

Every busy parent needs a quick and easy meal that’s healthy, cheap and that the kids will eat, but is not a lot of fuss.

It’s a tall order, ticking all those boxes, but this dish does just that which is why it’s the best chicken and vegetable bake and one of my favourite mid-week meals.

When you come home after a long day, the last thing you want to be doing is juggling food prep along with helping the kids with their homework and doing all the other little home admin tasks.

That’s where a chicken and veggie tray bake comes in handy.

The beauty of a tray bake is it only takes about five to ten minutes to get ready, and then you can spend the next forty minutes or so doing all the other things you need to do, without watching the pot or stirring or adding extra ingredients.

Or, if you’ve cut your veggies ahead of time, it takes even less time to get dinner in the oven.

This meal is super simple because it only has three main ingredients: chicken, pesto and vegetables.

Use bottled pesto for convenience (although you can make your own pesto if you have an abundance of basil and a little extra time), chicken (thigh, breast, drumsticks or chicken pieces all work) and whatever vegetables you have in the crisper.

Vegetables that work well include potatoes, sweet potatoes, zucchini (squash), pumpkin, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, capsicum, asparagus (although add that in a little later), onion, mushrooms, parsnips, Brussel Sprouts and probably more that I can’t think of.

Toss your chicken in the pesto, roughly chop your vegetables to around the same size – no need to peel, just wash – and bung it all in the oven. Ten minutes and dinner is in the oven.

Then set the oven timer and come back to a cooked dinner.

And the one pan – that means less washing up!