Baked Chicken Thighs with Pineapple and Cheese in the Oven

Baked Chicken Thighs with Pineapple and Cheese

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My all-time favourite chicken dish is oven-baked chicken thighs with pineapple under a cheese crust. You don’t need to buy whole birds for it. You can make this dish with any part of the chicken that has plenty of meat and few bones — thighs, breast fillet and so on.

Back when we lived in the land of scrawny blue chickens, hardly anyone had the chance to serve fried drumsticks, wings or chicken fillet in spicy sauce for a holiday. For a simple reason: there weren’t many chickens around, and collecting enough wings for one dish would have taken forever. So the most accessible dishes were plain fried chicken, chicken tabaka and soup. Things are different now — you walk into a shop and there are wings, there are feet, there’s a soup set, there are feathers and beaks. Pick, sniff and buy. Sniffing is a must, buying is optional.

The domestic chicken is a useful bird and easy to raise. Mischievous, though. A priceless source of meat, eggs, feathers, down, droppings and havoc in the vegetable garden. I’m quite sure even our ancestors knocked wild red junglefowl off the trees and roasted them over a fire with great pleasure. Today more than 200 chicken breeds are known, and by some estimates there are five times as many domestic chickens in the world as there are people.

Before I was born, in 1962, my father “visited” Cuba. During the Cuban Missile Crisis. There is still a photo of a pile of shot wild chickens that the soldiers ate. So wild chickens still survive in some places.

If you prefer, you can use fresh pineapple. But I find canned rings do the job just fine.

A pineapple is a pine cone that grows in the vegetable garden. I remember getting the lowest possible mark at school for that sentence. Oh well. It’s tasty, though you can’t eat a lot of it.

How to cook boneless chicken thighs in the oven, baked with pineapple under a cheese crust. A festive and at the same time simple chicken dish.

Ingredients

8 servings

Step-by-step recipe

Preparing the chicken

So, we buy the chicken. In pieces. Many people go for fillet. I don’t like white chicken meat, I prefer thighs. The meat there is tastier and more tender. But there’s no accounting for taste…

  1. We buy thighs. Medium-sized. Say, eight to ten of them.

    Ingredients for chicken with pineapple under cheese.

  2. At home, remove the skin from the thighs. Cut out the bone. Throw the bones away, or better still, feed the leftovers to the ever-present yard cats. Cut each thigh fillet in half.

  3. Salt lightly, sprinkle with spices, add a tablespoon of rich homemade mayonnaise (14 g) and put in the fridge for about an hour.

    Chicken marinating in a mix of mayonnaise and curry.

    A separate word about spices. Usually few people bother putting together their own blend. They buy a ready-made “For chicken” mix. Well, that probably makes sense. But if you’re interested, the best blend for chicken is: salt — 1 tsp (6 g); sweet red paprika — 1 tsp (2 g); curry — 1 tsp (2 g); ground black pepper — a pinch on the tip of a knife; ground coriander — a pinch on the tip of a knife; dried basil — a pinch; granulated garlic — 0.5 tsp; chili pepper — to your liking.

Cheese and pineapple

  1. While the meat rests in the fridge, finely grate the cheese. A mild, sweetish cheese works better than a sharp one — something like Radomer or Swiss. With big holes. You’ll need 250–300 g of cheese.

  2. Open the can of pineapple and drain the juice, though in my house somebody drinks it. Take out the rings. There are usually 10 in a can. Pieces of meat — 8–10, pineapple rings — 8–10.

Assembling and baking

  1. Take out the meat. Lightly grease a baking tray with vegetable oil so the meat doesn’t stick while cooking. Lay the pieces on the tray so they aren’t packed tightly, but without gaps either.

    Chicken pieces laid out in a greased baking dish.

    One pineapple ring on each piece of meat.

    A pineapple ring on each piece of meat.

  2. Sprinkle the dish with grated cheese. All over, without gaps. So that neither meat nor pineapple is visible. You can add a little mayonnaise on top. But the chicken turns out wonderful without it too.

    Chicken covered with a thick layer of grated cheese.

  3. Put in the oven at 180 °C. The chicken cooks for 30–40 minutes: as soon as it’s golden and the meat is done, take it out. The main thing is not to miss the moment, or it will burn.

    Baking in the oven.

Serving

  1. Chicken with pineapple is served hot or cold. For a holiday table, the chicken thighs can be cooked the day before and then quickly reheated in the microwave, just like French-style baked meat.

    Chicken served hot or cold.

    Oven-baked chicken thighs with pineapple are very filling and delicious. Especially when the chicken sits on a slice of really fresh bread.

    Oven-baked chicken thighs

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Calories and macros

490 kcal

Serving ≈ 160 g

  • Protein30 g25% of kcal
  • Fat36 g68% of kcal
  • Carbs9 g7% of kcal

100 g305 kcalProtein 18.8 gFat 22.6 gCarbs 5.6 g

Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.

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To Get It Right

Which pineapple to use

Canned rings will do just fine: they all come in light syrup, and that suits the dish perfectly. In fact, chicken goes well with any sweet-and-sour fruit, so you could try it with orange, or even kiwi.

Baking tray or ceramic dish

In a ceramic dish the chicken comes out as if braised in its own juices: ceramic heats up slowly, and skinless thighs release a lot of juice. On a metal tray the liquid evaporates faster and the chicken bakes more.

With mushrooms

Readers put fried button mushrooms on the chicken and the pineapple on top of them. We used to do that too, but later we made them into separate dishes.

Have your own trick for this recipe?

Questions and answers

How long to bake chicken thighs with pineapple in the oven?

30–40 minutes at 180 °C, until the cheese is golden and the meat is done. Every oven is different, so all times and temperatures are more of a guideline.

Won’t the cheese burn in 30–40 minutes?

No: that’s what the mayonnaise is for, and the oven itself takes 10 minutes or more to heat up. The crust comes out superb. But keep an eye on it anyway so it doesn’t burn.

Can you make chicken with pineapple from fillet or breast?

Yes: any part of the chicken with plenty of meat and few bones will do. But thighs come out juicier, as the meat there is tastier and more tender.

Can you make it without mayonnaise?

Yes, the mayonnaise on top is optional and the chicken turns out wonderful without it. But without mayonnaise some of the cheese melts into the juices, so sprinkle it more thickly for a solid cheese cap.

Can you bake chicken with pineapple under foil?

Yes, but steam collects under the foil and the cheese doesn’t brown. If you cover it, remove the foil about 10 minutes before it’s done, or turn on the top grill for a few minutes at the end.

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