Slow Cooker Lemon Chicken
47 Comments Aug 20, 2024
Updated Jun 12, 2025
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Crockpot Lemon Chicken is a bright and flavorful dish made with fresh lemon juice, Italian seasoning, and tender chicken—perfect over rice or potatoes.
One dish I love to order out is lemon chicken. This crock pot lemon chicken recipe is restaurant-quality. It may have a few more steps than my other recipes, but your efforts will be rewarded.
Cooking the lemon chicken in the slow cooker helps the chicken absorb more of the lemony flavor of the sauce. You will love how simple it is to make this lemon chicken, which is good enough to serve guests.
Ingredients for Easy Lemon Chicken
See how I make lemon chicken affordable and easy. Find the full recipe in the recipe card below the images.
- Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts – Try to find thinly sliced chicken breasts OR cut these in half.
- All-purpose Flour -Flour is used to coat the chicken and helps thicken the sauce.
- Zesty Italian Salad Dressing Dry Mix Packet – This is the flavor in the dish! Don’t skip this; it also has enough sodium to flavor the entire recipe.
- Cooking Oil – To brown the chicken in.
- Lemons – You will need a whopping 1/2 cup of fresh lemon juice. DO NOT USE BOTTLED, it is not the same.
- Chicken Broth – This will cut back on the acidity of lemons.
Variations
Here are my ways to change this recipe up:
- Chicken thighs can be used instead of chicken breasts. Though you will want to cook an hour longer for these are thicker than the thinly sliced chicken breasts.
- For a change of flavor, use a ranch dressing packet instead of the Italian dressing mix.
- Fresh herbs can be added (in addition to the Italian dressing mix). Chop rosemary, thyme and parsley at the beginning of the cooking time.
How to Make Lemon Chicken in a Crockpot
With my simple steps you can have restaurant style chicken:
- Coat the chicken in a seasoned flour mix and lightly brown it in a skillet—Add it to the slow cooker with broth and fresh lemon juice.
- Cover and cook on high until the chicken is tender, then serve with the sauce from the slow cooker.
How to Serve
When serving this, think of what restaurants would serve with lemon chicken.
- This chicken goes best over mashed potatoes or rice!
- Serve with a green salad or steamed broccoli.
- Leftovers are great cubed and served in a salad.
Featured Comment
“This lemon chicken was excellent.I have made many of your recipes and have never been disappointed.”
– Tony
Slow Cooker Lemon Chicken
How to Video
Equipment
Ingredients
- 1 ½ pounds boneless chicken breasts, or chicken tenderloins work great
- .60 oz. package dry zesty italian salad dressing mix
- 1 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon cooking oil
- ½ cup FRESH lemon juice, (about 2 large lemons, do not use bottled lemon juice)
- ½ cup chicken broth
Instructions
- Cut the chicken breasts into 2 pieces length wise, so you have 2 thin pieces of chicken breasts.
- Put dressing packet and flour in the ziplock bag. Add the chicken to the bag, and shake to coat the chicken.
- Set a large skillet on the stove-top over medium high heat. Add the cooking oil. When the oil is hot brown the chicken on both sides. No need to cook through.
- Add browned chicken to the slow cooker. Pour over the lemon juice and chicken broth.
- Place lid on slow cooker.
- Cook on HIGH for 3 hours, without peeking.
- Make sure to drizzle lemon sauce from bottom of slow cooker onto the chicken when serving.
- Serve over rice or mashed potatoes. Enjoy.
Sarah’s Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition info is auto-generated. This information is an estimate; if you are on a special diet, please use your own calculations.
More Crockpot Chicken Recipes
Slow Cooker Chicken Thighs and Lemon Pepper Chicken Thighs are both tender, flavorful options—one simple and savory, the other with a bright citrus twist. Try my Lemonade Chicken which uses lemonade concentrate.
Buttery Mississippi Chicken and Crockpot Marry Me Chicken each bring bold flavors to the table, whether you’re craving something zesty or rich and creamy.
Slow Cooker Whole Chicken and Crockpot Chicken Piccata offer two classic styles—one herb-roasted and hearty, the other light and tangy with capers and lemon.
The recipe sounds delicious.
Do you have to brown the chicken? Can you use frozen chicken and place in the crock pot?
Having tried this recipe, I was disappointed. It was much too lemony ( I love lemon flavor). I added about 2 T of honey and thickened with cornstarch with a little water. Broccoli was overcooked ( used low setting for that) and not attractive.
I thought it was great. The family loved it. So moist and tasty.
This is the BEST slow cooker recipe I have ever made!! Thank you so much!
This sounds so amazing! I am stopping to ge the salad dressing packette and lemons later today. Gonna try it on the stove cause I’m out of time for slow cooker today, although this is the best way I’ve found to cook!
Have you tried taking a chicken, sprinkling seasoning all over it (I used Montreal Steak Seasoning), and putting it in your slow cooker on LOW for 8 hours?? When you come home your house will smell devine. You don’t add any liquid to the pot. The chicken will be so moist and wonderful!!! Mine browns and has a crusty skin on top too!!! It’s incredible!
I am going to add you to my blog list! Thanks!!!
Julie
The Montreal Steak Seasoning Chicken sounds amazing! My husband loves that seasoning! Thanks for stopping by. 🙂
Can you subsitute zesty italian dressing for the dry dressing packet? If so how much?
Yes! you can sub the normal italian dressing packet, the little packet. 🙂
Thank you so much for linking this recipe up at Recipe Sharing Monday! The new link party is up and I’d love to see you back. Have a great week. 🙂
This recipe was so yummy. I didn’t have any broccoli, and it still turned out good. This is the best crock pot meal I’ve ever had!
could be wheat free if replace the flour with corn starch which I will be doing ; )
Perfect disco giraffe! Love the name 😉
Can you cook on low for a longer time?
Yes, 6-8 hours works great.
This looks so amazing! I can’t wait to try it later this week. The pictures look great!
Thanks Judy! I know you’ll love it!