Baked Chicken and Gravy

Baked chicken and gravy is a budget-friendly meal that is perfect any time of year. The chicken and gravy recipe is super easy to make, filling, and delicious. The recipe only requires four ingredients, which you can make and have in the oven baking in less than ten minutes.

Finding the Recipe

In 2016 and again in 2018, we traveled back to Tennessee for Thanksgiving to visit family. I always love to visit with my Great Aunt Ree in Memphis. She’s almost 90-years-old and we ask her a million questions about family.

I’ve looked at so many of our family’s black and white photos over the years and wondered what my great-grandmother was like in her younger years, how she made it through the day picking cotton, growing her own garden, feeding lots of kids, and not having air-conditioning–ack!

My heart seems to fill up more with each story. The photographs come to life for me, and I get a sense of where I came from.

Can I make baked chicken in a convection oven?

Yes, you can make the chicken in a convection oven. Turn the convection oven to 400-degrees. Place the chicken in the pan, add the rest of the ingredients and cook for approximately 45 to 50 minutes.

I have a convection oven that is also a microwave and it’s handy to use when the standard oven is being used for something else. Plus, if you’re wanting the chicken to cook faster, all the way through, the convection oven is the way to go.

For this recipe, I used a standard oven.

What should the baked chicken breast internal temp be?

The internal temperature of the chicken should be 165-degrees when finished cooking, whether using a convection oven or a standard oven.

If you’re going to use a standard oven, like the one I use in this recipe, you will still need the temperature to rise to 165-degrees.

If you’re eating dark meat, the temperature should also get to 165-degrees. To find out the temperature, you can use a digital thermometer to get the results. I bought my instant-read thermometer at the grocery store.

Place the thermometer into the thickest part of the chicken breast to get the reading, making sure you don’t allow the thermometer to touch any part of the pan or you might get an incorrect reading.

If you are cooking chicken with bones, make sure the thermometer rests inside of the meat and does not touch the bone, or you will get an incorrect reading.

An Easy Recipe

Back to my trip where I found this delicious recipe…

Don’t you love looking at all of the older photos? Do you ask a lot of questions like I do?

While we were there she gave me some old food magazines and a very old cookbook. So old, that when you open the pages it smells like a card catalog from the library. I don’t know about you, but I love that smell!

I found some great recipes to share and baked chicken and gravy is one of them. It’s also a budget-friendly recipe, which we love in our house.

Feeding two growing boys can be a challenge on the pocketbook. And this is one of those easy baked chicken recipes that are inexpensive.

And, it’s one of those great chicken recipes for dinner.

You can eat this baked chicken and gravy over rice, mashed potatoes, or with some veggies.

If you love easy recipes, give this Crock Pot lemon chicken a try, or this baked chicken breast recipe that takes about five minutes to get in the oven.

Recipe and printable instructions at the bottom of the post. 

How Do You Make A Chicken Gravy?

It’s super easy. I am telling ya, I love cream cheese. It’s inexpensive, and it makes a dish taste much creamier. So, any meal that starts with cream cheese is a good one in my book.

The great thing about this recipe is that the homemade gravy ingredients that you’re adding on top of the chicken blend together well and taste amazing. You can spread the simple gravy recipe over mashed potatoes or rice.

Add the softened cream cheese and one can of cream of celery soup. If you forgot to set the cream cheese out to soften, that’s ok. I never remember to set it out. It will mix up just fine.

Add the salt, pepper, and milk and mix it up. 

Get your chicken ready. I used three breasts for this recipe. It fed all four of us, including those two growing boys.

Now that the kids are a little older and hungrier, I would add a fourth breast to the recipe.

Spread the cream cheese mixture over the chicken. You will be turning it over once, halfway through the baking process. 

The juices from the baked chicken will add even more liquid to the gravy, so you will have plenty to spread around.

I baked the chicken for a little over an hour at 350-degrees. You can turn up the heat and lower the time if you want to get supper on the table a little faster.

Turn the chicken over once, halfway through the baking time.

This is one of my favorite baked chicken recipes.

Mashed potatoes and green beans are great side dishes to baked chicken and gravy. There’s enough gravy to spread on your potatoes, as well.

Other side dishes to serve with chicken and gravy:

• Oven baked potato wedges
• Southern homemade butter beans
• Cheesy diced baked potatoes
• Slow cooker glazed carrots with brown sugar

Check out the baked chicken and gravy recipe card below, grab those ingredients, and start cooking! I love baked chicken recipes and I think you’ll love this one, too.

Then, share your comments below and click here to share a picture of your dinner on the Pinterest Pin!  If you made any changes or added something different, be sure to share with us. 

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More recipes you’ll love:

Southern Plate, Southern Bite, Julia’s Simply Southern,

Kelly Lynn’s Sweets and Treats and The Country Cook