Low-Carb Pepperoni Pizza Chicken Bake (Video)
Try this Low-Carb Pepperoni Pizza Chicken Bake when you need some low-carb and gluten-free comfort food! This is a dinner the whole family will enjoy and it’s also low-glycemic, and can be South Beach Diet Friendly; use the Diet-Type Index to find more recipes like this one.
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Watch the video to see if you might like to make Low-Carb Pepperoni Pizza Chicken Bake!
This new recipe for Low-Carb Pepperoni Pizza Chicken Bake is my gift to everyone who’s been carefully watching what they eat during January and is now craving something that qualifies as comfort food. And although nothing might be quite as comforting as real pepperoni pizza, this dish is completely delicious and definitely scratches that pizza itch with something that’s also low in carbs. (And if January is getting a little long, you can find more low-carb comfort food here.)
I made this a couple of times with my nephew Jake to get it just right. The first time we didn’t reduce the pizza sauce and the dish was too watery. We also tried it first with turkey pepperoni, which was fine if that’s what you prefer, but this recipe doesn’t take a lot of pepperoni and the full-fat pepperoni definitely crisped up a lot better. (It also adds more fat to the dish, but most of that fat is left in the bottom of the dish; if that’s an issue for you I’d go with the turkey pepperoni.)You can use part-skim or full-fat Mozzarella Mozzarella, either will be good. If you have family members who love pizza and others who need to limit carbs (whatever the reason), I promise this is going to be a hit!
(Low-Carb Pepperoni Pizza Chicken Bake was featured in the Top Ten New Recipes of 2015 (plus Honorable Mentions) and also in 55 Deliciously Healthy Low-Carb and Gluten-Free Recipes with Pizza Flavors in 2016.)
You can make your own pizza sauce if you want even less carbs, but I checked labels at the store carefully and found this sauce that only had 18 carbs for the whole jar, so I used that. Don’t skip the step of simmering the sauce on low until it’s reduced to one cup.
Trim chicken well, cut each breast in half, and then pound until they’re as thin as you can get with out the chicken shredding apart. (I use a meat mallet, but anything heavy will work.) Season chicken with oregano-garlic powder mix, and then quickly brown the chicken on both sides. (It won’t be cooked through.)
Layer the chicken pieces in a glass casserole dish that’s barely big enough to fit the chicken. Spread each piece with a generous amount of the reduced sauce. Put a thin slice of Mozzarella and few slices of pepperoni on each chicken breast. Bake at 400F/200C for 25-30 minutes, or until the cheese is melted and starting to slightly brown.
Serve hot and wait for compliments. I promise this will be popular with all the pizza fans in the family! If you’re reheating leftovers, I recommend you cover the dish to keep the chicken from drying out.
More Low-Carb Ideas with Pizza Flavors:
Low-Carb Deconstructed Pizza Casserole ~ Kalyn’s Kitchen
Pepperoni Pizza Cauliflower Casserole ~ I Breathe I’m Hungry
Julia Child’s Eggplant Pizzas ~ Kalyn’s Kitchen
Flourless, Gluten-Free Low-Carb Pizza ~ Gluten-Free Easily
Low-Carb Zucchini Crust Vegetarian Pizza Margherita ~ Kalyn’s Kitchen
Fat Head Pizza ~ Ditch the Carbs
55+ Low-Carb and Gluten-Free Recipes with Pizza Flavors ~ Kalyn’s Kitchen
Weekend Food Prep:
This recipe has been added to a new category called Weekend Food Prep to help you find recipes you can prep or cook on the weekend and eat during the week!
Low-Carb Pepperoni Pizza Chicken Bake
Try this Low-Carb Pepperoni Pizza Chicken Bake when you need some low-carb and gluten-free comfort food!
Ingredients:
- 1 jar (14 oz) pizza sauce, reduced to 1 cup (See note about pizza sauce)
- 4 large boneless-skinless chicken breasts (6-8 oz. each)
- 1 T olive oil
- 1 tsp. Greek oregano (sometimes just called oregano)
- 1 tsp. garlic powder
- 6 oz. piece of Mozzarella, sliced about 1/4 inch thick
- 2 oz. sliced pepperoni (regular or turkey pepperoni)
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 400F/200C. Put the pizza sauce in a small saucepan and simmer over low heat until it’s reduced to one cup, about 20 minutes. Don’t skip this step or the dish will be watery.
- While the sauce reduces, trim the chicken breasts and cut each one crosswise to make two same-size pieces. Put chicken pieces one at a time inside a heavy plastic bag and use a meat mallet (or something heavy) to pound the chicken until it’s as thin as you can get it without it shredding apart. (Don’t worry if some pieces break apart a little.) Mix the Greek oregano and garlic powder in a little bowl and then sprinkle both sides of each piece of chicken with the mixture.
- Heat the olive oil over medium-high heat in the largest non-stick frying pan you have (you may have to do this in 2 batches if your pan isn’t big enough.) Add the chicken pieces and cook 1-2 minutes on each side, just long enough to brown the chicken but not long enough to cook it through.
- Choose the smallest glass casserole dish you have that will fit all the browned chicken pieces, and lay the chicken in the dish in a single layer. Cut the Mozzarella into slices and cut the slices as needed to make enough pieces to mostly cover the top of each piece of chicken.
- By now the sauce should be nicely reduced, so spread sauce over the top of each chicken breast. (Use it all.) Top each piece with sliced Mozzarella and pepperoni slices, covering the top of each piece of chicken as much as you can.
- Bake uncovered about 25-30 minutes, or until the cheese is melted and starting to brown and the pepperoni is slightly crisped. (Some pieces of pepperoni will slice off the chicken, try not to obsess about that like I did.) Serve hot.
- This was great reheated in the microwave for a few minutes, although you might not have any left!
Notes:
Use the lowest-carb pizza sauce you can find or make your own pizza sauce to keep the carbs low for this recipe.
Low-Carb Diet / Low-Glycemic Diet / South Beach Diet Suggestions:
This Low-Carb Pepperoni Pizza Chicken Bake with full-fat cheese and pepperoni should be great for traditional low-carb and Keto eating plans if you’re careful to choose low-carb pizza sauce (or make your own). You could use skim-milk Mozzarella and turkey pepperoni for the South Beach Diet. We definitely liked it best with full-fat pepperoni, but quite a bit of the fat is left in the dish.
Find More Recipes Like This One:
Use the Diet Type photo index pages to find more recipes suitable for a specific eating plan. You might also like to Follow Kalyn’s Kitchen on Pinterest to see all the good recipes I’m sharing there.
Nutritional Information?
If you want nutritional information for a recipe, I recommend entering the recipe into this nutrition analyzer, which will calculate it for you. Or if you’re a member of Yummly, you can use the Yum button on my site to save the recipe and see the nutritional information there.
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When you cut the breast in half do you mean sideways or right down middle, I’m guessing sideways so it would be thinner but thought I’d ask to make sure
I pounded the chicken, so I cut it down the middle to make two smaller pieces, but I think your idea of cutting into two thinner slices is a good one too! Either way will work; you want pieces that are quite thin.
Could you use chicken thighs instead?
It may work with boneless, skinless chicken thighs, but I think they will need a lot more trimming to give a good result. I haven’t tried it that way.
Do you have the nutritional information for this recipe?
I wish there was an easy way for me to make that happen. This post talks about my efforts after I switched my blog from Blogger to WordPress and had to edit 2,000+ recipes. I am planning to add nutritional information, but not until the editing project is done, because I know that once I add it to one recipe people will expect to see it on every recipe.
If you look after the recipe itself, I give two links (where it says “Nutritional Information”) for suggestions of two ways to get that information. That’s all I am able to do at this time.
Looking for easy keto bread recipe.
I recommend Google. I don’t have a recipe like that.
Great pizza recipe, looks delicious and healthy. Thanks for posting.
Some of the people in my family don’t like tomato sauce so I did one pan according to your recipe and another where I swapped basil pesto instead. Both were awesome. Definitely making again
So glad you enjoyed. Very creative to use pesto on one version.
I don’t know why people are so hung up on the author providing nutritional information when most of the people who try these recipes change the way it’s done or the ingredients that are in it. Y’all know most of these ingredients are going to be little to no carbs, and besides that, you should be keeping track of your own carbs, macros, and nutritional information as it is different for every person. With that said, the people who write and post these recipes go through a lot of trouble to do this for us, and to give us free recipes! I mean, they could be putting it in a book and charging us for it! I for one am grateful and will take the time to input the ingredients into my own nutritional app! Thank you Kalyn! Love it!!!
Thanks so much Mark! I appreciate the support!
I love the idea of using chicken as the base! I have a similar pizza recipe that is to die for.
So glad you like it!
Hello! I’m going to make this tonight…curious if I could use a small jar of :”pizza Quick” sauce instead of reducing the pizza sauce? It’s Ragu as well. Looks delicious…my kids gave me the thumbs up!
Correction…making tomorrow~
I can’t really answer because I’ve never used that type of sauce. The reducing is to remove the excess liquid in the sauce. Without doing it the finished dish will likely be watery in the bottom.
First a confession. It drives me crazy when I see recipe reviews where the person changed every ingredient (“I didn’t have any eggs so I used peanuts”) and wonders why it didn’t work. But … my husband is doing low carb right now and I needed pizza so… anyway, I added our other favorite toppings to this recipe and it was great!! On half of the chicken breasts I added sautéed mushrooms, sliced jalapeños, and diced green bell peppers (under the cheese). I added bacon crumbles on top of all of them. It was amazing. Served it with a big salad and we have enough for another meal (just the two of us). Great recipe!!
So glad you enjoyed it! I know what you mean about switching ingredients. But I don’t mind at all when people adjust the recipe to their own preferences and it comes out great!
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Made this tonight and calculated the macros myself by my ingredients….which I do with every recipe I try 🙂 easy peasy!
Thanks so much for sharing! Delicious!!!
So glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for taking responsibility to do that yourself!
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I will definitely be making this recipe again! Everyone loved it! Even those who are not doing low carb. Before everyone was done eating they were already telling me to make sure that I make this again! I pretty much stuck to the recipe, the only thing Is that I used shredded mozzarella instead of slices because that’s what I had on hand and it came out beautifully.
So happy to hear it was a hit with everyone!
Tried this last night and didn’t disappoint, super yummy!
So glad you liked it!
I read in some of the comments that you cannot provide nutritional information. But do you have a guesstimate of how much one chicken breast has with sauce and pepperoni? Tks
Sorry but I wouldn’t want to guess. You could check the info in Yummly, knowing that they may not be calculating at the lowest possible carbs for pizza sauce.
Thanks for sharing! Does it keep very well til the next day?
It’s best freshly made but not bad refrigerated for a day and reheated in the microwave the next day.
Trying this tonight!! Im always looking for low carb/healthier alternatives to some favorite foods. I bet this will be a hit! Ill be adding mushrooms and olives also. And some pasta on the side for my son…who is 3..and obviously not watching his carbs lol
Hope you and the son will both enjoy Heather!
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I know you’ve said you won’t post nutritional information because it takes “a lot of time”. But, if you’re offering recipes that are geared toward people on a keto diet, surely you know the importance of us having that information. I’d love to try this recipe, but I’ll move along without doing so, because you won’t take the time to give me the information I need. Not to be disrespectful but IMO, its irresponsible to publish a “diet” recipe without backing up that claim with the nutrition facts.
I am sorry you feel that way, I guess you will just have to find recipes somewhere else.
Here is a little more background for you. In September 2017 I switched my site to WordPress from a less technologically-complex blogging platform. (Yes, I should have done it years earlier, but that ship has sailed.) I knew there would be some things that wouldn’t transfer over, but I didn’t know that EVERY SINGLE POST would required editing. And I was switching so I could use the WordPress Recipe Plug-In to format my recipes, which also requires inputting information by hand on every post. I have been working since then (with three paid assistants) to edit recipes and put them into the recipe plug-in and we have about 30% of the recipes done. So there is absolutely no way I can calculate and add nutritional information to over 2,000 recipes on top of this.
And I get comments every day from people who love my site and enjoy the recipes. So not to be disrespectful back to you, but obviously some people don’t mind calculating it or don’t need that information. I know that many of my readers use Yummly to see the nutritional information, which isn’t always accurate because it doesn’t recognize some ingredients, but much of the time the Yummly information is pretty close. I just checked and this recipe does have nutritional info in Yummly.
And that’s a moot point anyway, because I simply CAN NOT do it at this time. Sorry you are unable to understand that.
Wow Deb. Why do you think it’s her responsibility to make sure you are staying within your carb count? The woman has taken the time to share her recipe. If you can’t take responsibility for your own diet, then stroll on by.
Kaelyn, you didn’t owe her an explanation.
Now, on a better note, I’ve made this at least 3 times for my family and we love it. Thanks for sharing!!
Thanks for the vote of confidence Daphne, so glad you have enjoyed the recipe!
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Can you use shredded cheese instead?
Probably, but it will fall off and stick to the bottom of the dish a lot more than slices of cheese.
Do you think I could use marinara sauce and still reduce it down?
I think so, but it might not taste quite as much like pizza. I might add oregano. Also if you care about carbs, look for the lowest carb sauce you can find.
Helping my sister ease into the habit of cooking for diabetic needs, and we started with this one. It turned out great!
Notes:
-we didn’t read far enough down the page while prepping so we assumed the cheese would need to be shredded, rather than just sliced, but this didn’t seem to change much.
-we found it a little heavy on the oregano for our taste, and will likely just season one side next time we make it.
-Added a layer of fresh spinach on top of the tomato sauce on half of ours and it was a great modification
Glad you liked it and that you’re already figuring how to make it work better for your own taste!
It would be helpful if you included the dishes nutrition :)))-
I’m not able to provide nutritional information for the recipes for several reasons, including the additional time it takes, the difficulty in doing it accurately, and the sheer number of recipes on my site. If you look after the recipe itself, I give two links (where it says “Nutritional Information”) for suggestions of two ways to get that information.
I have over 2000 recipes on the site and spend 6-8 hours most days working on the blog. I just can’t edit over 2,000 recipes to add that info, and I know once I do it on one recipe people will expect to see it on every recipe. Thanks for understanding.
No nutritional info?
I’m not able to provide nutritional information for the recipes for several reasons, including the additional time it takes, the difficulty in doing it accurately, and the sheer number of recipes on my site. If you look after the recipe itself, I give two links (where it says “Nutritional Information”) for suggestions of two ways to get that information.
I have over 2000 recipes on the site and spend 6-8 hours most days working on the blog. I just can’t edit over 2,000 recipes to add that info, and I know once I do it on one recipe people will expect to see it on every recipe. Thanks for understanding.
Do you think this would work preparing ahead to the point of going in the oven? I want to try this but I always meal prep on the weekend for the week ahead.
First, I haven’t tried it so obviously I can’t say for sure. But I think it might work to be in the fridge for a day or two. You’d have to let it come to room temperature when you cook it though, so that might defeat the purpose of preparing ahead. Love to hear how it works if you try it.
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Sauted mushrooms, pepper and onion strips added to it plus turkey pepperoni.
Oh, I forgot I sprinkled black olives too. In the oven now, can’t wait for dinner.
Hope you enjoy!
This was amazing everyone in my house loved it
So glad to hear that. Sorry for the slow reply. For some reason I’m not getting notified of comments the last two days.
Oooh, thanks for the ideas! I’m always looking for ways to sneak vegetables into my husband. He’s worse than the kids ever were!
Hope you enjoy Amy!
This was a huge hit in our house! Even with my three teenage boys who aren’t doing low carb with us loved it. I made them garlic bread to go with it but would even make them pasta next time as a filler. That way they wouldn’t eat so much of the dish. 😂😂 I even doubled the recipe. Love the idea of black olives. I bet mushrooms would be amazing too.
So glad you enjoyed it and especially glad to hear it was a hit with the teens!