Creamy Cheesy Spinach Stuffed Chicken Traybake - juicy chicken breasts stuffed with a creamy parmesan spinach filling, all baked on one tray with baby potatoes and asparagus for an easy flavour-packed dinner. This is exactly the kind of comforting meal that feels a is perfect for a busy weeknight.
I absolutely love tray bakes because everything cooks together with minimal fuss and hardly any washing up afterwards. Apart from quickly parboiling the potatoes first, the oven does all the hard work for you. It's the perfect meal when you want something hearty and delicious without ending up with a kitchen full of pots and pans afterwards.
Calories in Creamy Cheesy Spinach Stuffed Chicken Tray Bake
This recipe serves 4 and is 597 calories per serving.
If you're looking for more recipes by calories, you'll find plenty of options grouped by calorie range here: Slimming Eats Low Calorie Recipes
If you're following a calorie-controlled diet or a healthy eating plan, it's important to calculate your daily calorie needs using a reliable calorie calculator. The calorie counts provided are estimates and can vary depending on the exact ingredients and portion sizes you use. Using your own calculations helps ensure you're meeting your individual needs. A calorie calculator can help you make informed choices and stay on track with your goals.
See the recipe card for full nutritional estimation.
Ingredients Notes
To make this recipe you will need the following ingredients:
- Baby potatoes: Baby potatoes roast beautifully and become soft and fluffy on the inside while crisping up on the outside. Halving them helps them cook evenly and soak up all the flavour from the tray bake.
- Asparagus: Adds freshness and a little crunch that pairs perfectly with the creamy stuffed chicken. Trim the woody ends before chopping.
- Chicken breasts: Small chicken breasts work best for stuffing and cook more evenly on the tray. Cutting a pocket into the side helps hold all the creamy filling.
- Seasonings: The paprika, sea salt, onion powder, black pepper, and parsley all help add savoury flavour throughout the dish.
- Low-fat cream cheese: Creates the creamy base for the stuffing while keeping it lighter than traditional creamy fillings.
- Parmesan cheese: Adds a rich salty flavour to the stuffing and helps create a delicious cheesy finish.
- Fresh spinach: Adds colour, freshness, and extra flavour to the creamy filling. It wilts down as it cooks so a little goes a long way.
- Garlic: Adds savoury depth and works perfectly with the parmesan and spinach.
- Olive oil spray: Helps the potatoes and chicken roast beautifully while keeping the recipe lighter.
Once you've gathered all the ingredients and prepared them accordingly, you're all set to create this easy and delightful recipe.
See the recipe card for specific quantities and instructions.
Variations and Substitutes
There are plenty of easy ways to adapt this creamy cheesy spinach stuffed chicken tray bake depending on what you have on hand.
- Chicken breasts can be swapped for chicken thighs or thick boneless pork chops, although cooking time may vary slightly.
- Baby potatoes can be replaced with sweet potato, butternut squash, or regular potatoes cut into chunks.
- Asparagus can be swapped for green beans, broccoli, courgette, Brussels sprouts, or tenderstem broccoli.
- Parmesan can be replaced with mozzarella, cheddar, feta, gouda, or a lighter cheese blend.
- Add extra flavour to the stuffing with sun-dried tomatoes, chopped bacon, chilli flakes, or fresh herbs.
- Spinach can be swapped for kale or Swiss chard.
- Low-fat cream cheese can be replaced with ricotta, boursin, mascarpone, or a dairy-free cream cheese alternative.
- Add mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, peppers, or red onion to the tray for extra vegetables.
- Use garlic powder instead of fresh garlic if preferred.
- Fresh parsley can be swapped for basil, thyme, or oregano for a different flavour profile.
Tips for Tray Bake / Sheet Pan Cooking
A few simple tips can really help tray bakes turn out perfectly every time.
- Spread everything out in an even layer on the tray so the ingredients roast properly rather than steam.
- Avoid overcrowding the tray. If everything is packed too tightly together, the vegetables and potatoes will not crisp up as nicely.
- Parboiling potatoes first helps them become softer in the middle and crispier on the outside once roasted.
- Use a large sturdy baking tray or sheet pan for the best roasting results.
- Lightly coat ingredients with olive oil spray to help them caramelise and colour nicely in the oven.
- Season generously, as roasting really helps bring out the flavour of herbs, spices, and garlic.
- Let the chicken rest for a few minutes before serving so it stays juicy.
- Line the tray with parchment paper if you want even easier cleanup afterwards.
Side Suggestions
This tray bake already includes potatoes and asparagus, making it a pretty complete meal on its own, but you can easily add extra vegetables if you want to bulk it out even more.
Roasted carrots work especially well alongside the creamy chicken, but you could also add green beans, broccoli, tenderstem broccoli, Brussels sprouts, peas, sweetcorn, or a simple mixed salad on the side.
More Traybake Recipes
- Chicken, Vegetable and Potato Traybake
- Black Pepper Chicken Tray Bake
- Garlic Lemon Tray Bake
- Lemon Garlic Chicken Rice Tray Bake
- Chilli Cheese Fries
- Lemon Herb Butter Salmon Tray Bake
- Feta, Roasted Beetroot and Chicken Tray Bake
- Moroccan Chicken Tray Bake
- Garlic Chicken and French Bean Tray Bake
- All Day Breakfast Tray Bake
- Beef Kofta Tray Bake
- Honey Garlic Chicken Tray Bake
- Chickpea, Egg and Kale Tray Bake
or if you would like more recipe ideas - head on over to the FULL RECIPE INDEX where you will find over 900 delicious recipes with calories and you can search by meal type, ingredients, course, diet and more.
All recipes on Slimming Eats have estimated nutritional information for your convenience.
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Recipe Card
Creamy Cheesy Spinach Stuffed Chicken Tray Bake
Creamy Cheesy Spinach Stuffed Chicken Tray Bake - Tender Juicy Chicken Breasts with a Creamy Parmesan Spinach Stuffing all baked on one tray with Baby Yukon Gold Potatoes and Asparagus.
Ingredients
- 600g (21oz) of baby potatoes halved
- 600g (21oz) of asparagus, trimmed and then chopped in half.
- 4 small boneless skinless Chicken Breasts (200g/7oz each)
- 2 teaspoons of paprika
- 1 teaspoons of sea salt
- 1 teaspoons of onion powder
- 5 tablespoons of low-fat cream cheese
- 120g (4.25oz) of parmesan cheese, grated
- 1.5 handfuls of fresh spinach, roughly chopped
- 1 garlic clove, crushed
- olive oil spray
- fresh parsley
- salt and black pepper
Instructions
- Add the potatoes to a saucepan and cover with water, add a pinch of salt.
- Bring to a boil, turn off heat and leave for 5 minutes. Drain
- Preheat oven to 200c/400f (gas mark 6) (not a fan oven)
- Add the potatoes to a baking tray and spray over the top with olive oil spray.
- Place in the oven and bake for 20 minutes
- While the potatoes are baking, slightly flatten the chicken breasts.
- Using a sharp knife make a slit in the side of each breast so it creates a pocket.
- In a bowl combine the cream cheese, parmesan, chopped spinach and crushed garlic.
- Stuff this equally into the pockets of each chicken breast.
- In another small bowl combine the paprika, salt and onion powder
- Carefully rub the seasoning into each chicken breast.
- Remove tray and scatter the asparagus, then make 4 equal sized cleared spaces on the tray and add the stuffed chicken breasts
- Spray over the top with olive oil spray
- Place back in the oven for approx 25 minutes until the chicken is cooked through.
- Scatter with some fresh parsley, season as needed with salt and black pepper.
- Serve and Enjoy!!
Notes
Please see below for full nutritional info and additional details about recipe:
- Calories - scroll down to nutritional info box
- WW Points and other Slimming or Weight Loss programs - due to plans regularly changing and updating, we recommend calculating with the official tools you get as a member to those plans to ensure accuracy of values.
- Gluten Free Friendly
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Nutrition Information
Yield
4Serving Size
1 SERVINGAmount Per Serving Calories 579Total Fat 20gSaturated Fat 10gUnsaturated Fat 10gCholesterol 147mgSodium 1294mgCarbohydrates 46gFiber 8gSugar 5gProtein 55g
Nutritional information is an estimate and is to be used for informational purposes only. Ingredients can vary greatly from brand to brand and therefore it would be impossible to give accurate information.
Lucie says
I notice that you say “not fan oven” after the oven temperature. My oven is a fan oven, what should I do differently? Looking forward to making it!
Shevy (Slimming Eats) says
It’s just to make those with a fan oven aware that the temps were on a non fan oven. So if using a fan oven you should lower temp by 15-20c
Debra Wells says
Just made this for dinner. Absolutely delicious. Compliments from all the family.
Laura says
Made this for dinner tonight, didn’t have time to par boil and roast potatoes in the oven, so just chopped them up into bite size pieces, sprinkled with lemon juice and roasted in the actifry while the chicken and asparagus was cooking in the oven, then sprinkled with salt and added to the tray before putting the parsley on, it cut down on the cooking by about 30 minutes in total, but my goodness the overall dish was delicious! Will definitely be a family favourite now!
Shevy (Slimming Eats) says
so glad you enjoyed it Laura - thanks for sharing your cheat in the actifry, sounds like a great way to do it when short on time.
Jude says
I am going to make this for guests would it be okay to prepare the chicken breasts in advance and keep in the fridge?
Shevy (Slimming Eats) says
yep that should be perfectly fine 🙂
Heather Buckley says
This is absolutely gorgeous ! Family already asked to gave again this week !!
Katherine Birch says
Its says this recipe is suitable for freezing. At what stage would you freeze?
Shevy (Slimming Eats) says
I freezed it once cooked, fully defrosted and then just heated in the oven or microwave.
Lorraine says
Going to try this for my friend tomorrow but i was wondering would the asparagus not be really wilted being in the oven for 25mins? When roasting it i usually only have it in for 10mins maximum.
Shevy (Slimming Eats) says
I love my asparagus caramelized when roasted, so tasty!! but yes if you like it tender add it onto the tray later, so it's cooked to your liking.
Kay says
Cooker this yesterday it was delicious this will be one of my favourite dishes for the future.
Donna says
Please help,
I can’t find onion powder anywhere, only onion granules and I really want to make this,
Hope you can advise.
Thank you, Donna x
Shevy (Slimming Eats) says
onion granules are fine, it's the same as onion powder just not as fine 🙂
Louise says
Could this be cooked and reheated?
Shevy (Slimming Eats) says
it's best eaten once cooked, but I have reheated and it was fine 🙂
Rosa says
This would be a perfect recipe for my son who is starting uni in September. As he’ll be cooking just for one, can he freeze the chicken breasts after step 11?
Thanks,
Rosa x
Siobhan (Slimming Eats) says
yep he sure can, I freeze this often. 🙂
Charley Morton says
I really don't like asparagus. Could I swap this for tenderstem broccoli?
Siobhan (Slimming Eats) says
Yep sure, it should be fine.
Marie says
Want to make this for tonight, but just realised I'm out of parmesan! Can I use cheddar?
Siobhan (Slimming Eats) says
Sorry for the late response, I haven't tried it with cheddar, but a strong mature cheddar with lots of flavour should work.
Louise says
Could tenderstem brocolli be used instead if asparagus?
Nina says
Hi greetings from the UK and thank you for the fabulous recipe do you add the chopped spinach raw i.e., not steamed/cooked first… just wanted to check. I am assuming that the chicken is just brushed/sprayed with oil and then seasoned with the spices? It looks golden brown?