Strawberry Balsamic Grilled Chicken
This Strawberry Balsamic Grilled Chicken is a fresh and simple summer dinner your whole family will love! The chicken is flavored with a tangy balsamic marinade before grilling, and then topped with a lightly sweet strawberry and basil topping. This dish pairs perfectly with a salad (or tastes great on top of one) and though my husband initially gave me a skeptical look about strawberries on chicken, it was a big hit. The marinade for this recipe uses just a handful of ingredients you likely already have in your cupboard, so it’s super easy to toss together in the morning before work or an hour or two before dinner. The strawberry topping is also just 5 ingredients, so the only real time involved in this recipe is chopping the strawberries and grilling the chicken. Perfect for weeknights! Plus, each serving of Strawberry Balsamic Grilled Chicken is just 224 calories, 7 grams of carbs, or 1 WW Point (or 2 WW Points if following the diabetic Weight Watchers plan)! To view your current WW Points for this recipe and track it in the WW app or site, click here!
If you’re wondering where the heck I find perfectly-sized chicken breast cutlets for my recipes, I have a tip for you! I usually buy the big family packs of boneless, skinless chicken breasts at my grocery store because it’s cheaper and we eat a lot of chicken. The issue is, these breasts are gigantic, super thick, and often around 12-13 ounces raw weight each. I prefer thinner, smaller chicken breast cutlets, so I generally use kitchen shears to trim these breasts and then use either the shears or a large knife to cut them in half through the thick side. This makes two thinner cutlets with the same surface area on top that the original breast had. This won’t always work out perfectly depending on the shape of the breasts, so sometimes I end up with one perfect cutlet and one wonky one. Usually I will just chop the misshapen one into bite-sized pieces to use for Blackened Chicken Bites or in any of my recipes that use chopped chicken. The remaining cutlets work perfectly in recipes like this one!
Looking for more tasty lightened up chicken recipes like this Strawberry Balsamic Grilled Chicken? Check out my Blackened Chicken Bites, Mediterranean Topped Grilled Chicken, Cream Cheese and Herb Stuffed Chicken, Cheesy Bacon BBQ Chicken, Ricotta Stuffed Chicken Bake, Lemon Garlic Chicken and Beans Skillet, Tuscan Olive Chicken, Barbecue Bacon Wrapped Chicken Tenders, Fiesta Stuffed Chicken, Mexican Chicken Cauliflower Rice Skillet, Bruschetta Topped Balsamic Chicken, Baked Chicken Tenders, Pimento Cheese Stuffed Chicken, Lemon Pepper Iced Tea Chicken, Cream Cheese Stuffed Everything Chicken, Chicken Milanese, Hawaiian Chicken Skewers, and so many more in the Chicken section of my recipe index!
Strawberry Balsamic Grilled Chicken
Ingredients
Chicken and Marinade:
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 4 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 tablespoon Italian seasoning
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
- 6 boneless skinless chicken breast cutlets, about 5 – 5.5 oz each (32 ounces total)
Topping:
- 12 ounces strawberries, diced
- 2 teaspoons packed brown sugar
- 2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
- 1/8 teaspoon black pepper
- 1 - 2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
Instructions
- To make the marinade, combine the olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic, Italian seasoning, salt, and pepper in a dish and stir until combined. Place the chicken breasts in a zip-top gallon bag and pour the marinade over the top. Seal the bag, removing any excess air, and toss/massage the contents until the chicken breasts are coated in marinade. Place the bag in the fridge and allow the chicken to marinate for at least one hour/up to 12 hours.
- Just before you’re ready to grill the chicken, make the topping by combining the diced strawberries, brown sugar, balsamic vinegar, black pepper, and basil and stirring together. Allow to sit for 10-15 minutes.
- Heat your grill to medium. Remove the breasts from the marinade and allow any excess to drip off into the bag. Discard the leftover marinade. Place the breasts on the grill and cook, flipping halfway through, until the breasts reach an internal temperature of 165˚F. Remove from heat.
- Top each chicken breast with ¼ cup of the strawberry topping before serving.
Notes
224 calories, 7 g carbs, 4 g sugars, 6 g fat, 1 g saturated fat, 34 g protein, 1 g fiber (from myfitnesspal.com) MYWW SMARTPOINTS PER (1 chicken breast + ¼ cup topping) SERVING: (SP calculated using the recipe builder on weightwatchers.com) Green: 3 SmartPoints/ Blue: 1 SmartPoints/ Purple: 1 SmartPoints Weight Watchers Points Plus:
5 per (1 chicken breast + ¼ cup topping) serving (PP calculated using a Weight Watchers PointsPlus calculator and the nutrition info below) *Just a note about the nutrition information and Weight Watchers points for this recipe: If you plug the full amounts of the marinade ingredients listed into a nutrition calculator you will get different nutrition info than I have listed. Since so much of the marinade gets thrown out, I weighed the marinade before adding the chicken and then again after removing the chicken. That way I was able to calculate the nutritional values based more closely on the amount of marinade that actually gets consumed. I had about 4 ounces of marinade before the chicken went in and 3 ounces left once the chicken came out, so I used ¼ of the amounts listed in the ingredients to do my calculations. The nutrition information and WW points above should be a pretty accurate reflection of what actually makes it onto your plate! Adapted from Eating Well and Striped Spatula