Hawaiian Chicken Bake Recipe – Easy Dinner Idea!

This easy 4 ingredient dinner has that sweet and savory combo that can’t be beat.  The Hawaiian Chicken bake combines chicken with sweet pineapple and tangy barbecue sauce for a quick to make and delicious to eat dinner idea!

So this is kind of bad… Okay, really bad.  I have actually had this little gem of a recipe for over a year and am JUST NOW sharing it with you.  So bad, right?!

The story goes like this, I have made a Hawaiian Chicken crockpot recipe for years!  I absolutely love the tang of the barbecue sauce combined with the sweet juicy pineapple.  Mmmmm, isn’t this just making you hungry?  Just me, well then okay.  I love my crock pot but sometimes you just want the flavors and textures only the oven can give.  So I decided to give the recipe a little makeover and the Hawaiian Chicken Bake was born. {See ALL Easy Chicken Bake Recipes HERE!}

I made it and we ate it and I knew it had to go on the blog.  So a few weeks later I bought the stuff again, then set it up, took photos, and cooked the whole sha-bang again.

 

Only, the thing was that at the time I had a newborn, and two other little ones, and we were putting the house on the market and getting ready to move, so I was rushed and stressed and probably highly sleep deprived, and I just didn’t love the way the pictures turned out.  Excuses, excuses, I know!

And I know it is easy to land here on my blog from Pinterest, or maybe you even get my recipe e-mail or follow my site regularly (you don’t know how flattered I am!) and you just scroll through these posts with all the pictures.  But behind the scenes, I work really, really hard for those pretty pictures!  I have come a loooooong way from the pictures on my first posts and really only want to show you guys the absolutely most beautiful photos.  Then I get to write, and it kind of feels like I am having a one way conversation with my best friend.  I love sharing the recipes, more than most things in life, and the fact that you come read them and then make them for your family, is just beyond awesome to me.

So anyway, I didn’t like the pictures, so I planned to put the post up, but just kept pushing it farther and farther then last weekend I just went out, bought all the stuff again and spent my quite time while my husband took the kids recreating the photos for this post.  Thankfully this time I really love how everything came out so now I am burning the midnight oil excited to put it all together to share with you!

But seriously, it is pretty right?!  Now I am hungry AGAIN!!

Hawaiian Chicken Bake Recipe

There are 4 main ingredients in the Hawaiian Chicken Bake, and an extra one or two if you like to garnish like me. {Scroll to the bottom for a full printable recipe}

• Boneless skinless chicken
• Barbecue sauce
• Pineapple slices
• Provolone cheese
• Extras pictured:  Rice for serving and cilantro for garnish

First, to make this with the best results, you will want to trim any fat off the chicken then lay it flat in a baking dish.  If the chicken breasts are extra thick, you can butterfly them to help it cook more quickly.

Next spread the BBQ sauce on top of the chicken breast.  I usually don’t measure but just eyeball it, and spread a thick layer of BBQ to cover each chicken breast.

Then comes the pineapple. If you want to use fresh, go for it!  But I will be over here using canned and it still turns out extra delicious!  Get a can of pineapple slices and drain them.  Then use two pineapple slices per chicken breast and layer them over the barbecue sauce.

Last, lay on provolone cheese slices over the top.  I usually use 2 slices per chicken breast when I buy the smaller/normal slices.  When I get my provolone at Costco, theirs are extra large slices so I just use one like in the picture above.  You can always use more or less to taste as well!

Preheat the oven to 375˚F and then place on the dish on the lower middle rack in the oven and loosely cover with foil.  Bake for about 20 minutes then remove the foil and cook an additional 15-25 minutes or until the chicken is no longer pink and the juices run clear.  If they are thicker or your oven runs cool it might take a little longer.

Once it is cooked through you can take it out of the oven.  This dish makes  your whole house smell heavenly- BE WARNED! Neighbors.. friends… or anyone within smelling distance may casually invite themselves over for dinner! Serve it up with some rice or greens and you have a full healthy meal that the whole family will love!