You Only Need 4 Ingredients To Give Chicken A 10 Out Of 10 Italian Flavor Boost

Bright, intense, herby — pesto is fantastic, but its intensity and oil content can make it hard to incorporate into recipes on its own. Mixing it with a bit of cream, garlic, and cherry tomatoes creates the perfect sauce to elevate plain old chicken into something special. Similar to marry me chicken and engagement chicken, creamy pesto chicken calls on heavy cream, garlic, and basil to create a satisfying, comforting, flavor-packed dinner.

You can use any kind of chicken — grilled, oven-baked, fried, pan-seared — as the base for the creamy pesto sauce. Leftover chicken can even work well, as the real stars of the recipe are the richness of the cream and the brightness of the pesto. To make the sauce, sauté some garlic and tomatoes before combining them with heavy cream and pesto — feel free to use plenty of pepper (or even crushed red pepper flakes) to give it a bit of a kick. While you can make your own, store-bought pesto becomes luxuriously creamy when you add heavy cream.

If you're working with raw chicken, you can pour the sauce over it before baking in the oven, or pour it on top of already-cooked chicken for a quick and simple yet impressive dinner. You can also put the chicken and sauce on top of pasta to make the dish even more filling. Let's take a look at some ways you can customize this dinner using your favorite flavors in your fridge and pantry.

One of the best things about creamy pesto chicken is its versatility — you can easily throw in other ingredients that you have in your kitchen to elevate its flavor. Sun-dried tomatoes can add a hint of sweetness (you can also add a bit of the oil from your sun-dried tomatoes to boost the flavor of your sauce even further). If you go this route, you can also toss a few sun-dried tomatoes on top of the dish before serving alongside fresh herbs for a pop of color. You could also try adding some roasted red peppers to the mix for a hint of smokiness that will work well with the sauce's creamy, bright flavors. If you have some spinach in the fridge, feel free to give it a rough chop and let it cook down in the sauce — it'll add a bit of extra nutrients and give the sauce even more color. 

Vegetables aren't the only way you can boost the flavor of your sauce. Try adding some cheese, such as fresh mozzarella or ricotta, to provide some depth and richness. Top it off with a bit of crumbled bacon or prosciutto (just be conservative when adding it to the mix, as pesto can already be pretty salty). Finally, if you want to give it even more brightness, hit your sauce with a squeeze of lemon. No matter how you customize it, keeping pesto and heavy cream on hand ensures that you'll always have what you need to create a decadent, delicious sauce to make a quick weeknight dinner something special.