One Pan Fall Harvest Chicken Dinner

Days are getting shorter, nights are getting colder, dinners need to get easier! Ready in under an hour this One Pan Fall Harvest Chicken Dinner can be your new favorite autumn meal! A sheet pan filled with fresh seasonal produce and chicken thighs seasoned with rosemary and sage makes a fragrant and delightful fall dinner!

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This post was first published 10/28/2016 and was updated 10/05/2022 with updated photos and clarified recipe.

One Pan Autumn Chicken Dinner

If you are looking for the quintessential fall meal, this one is it. Packed with seasonal produce and flavors you can’t go wrong!

Not only is this meal a perfect autumn meal it is also a one pan dinner! Everything cooks together making clean up fast and easy!

A layer of seasonal fruits and veggies get chopped and layered on a sheet pan followed by chicken thighs and a little bit of bacon for good measure. 

Follow everything up with olive oil, rosemary, and sage. You won’t believe how good this meal makes your house smell!!

Ingredients 

• Chicken Thighs – Bone-in and Skin on, If needed you can add more or less chicken thighs onto the sheet pan, just keep an eye to make sure everything is cooking evenly. 
• Olive Oil – The olive oil will be mixed with the herbs before tossing on the produce and lightly brushing on the chicken. 
• Fresh Rosemary – I love rosemary in fall flavored food, just a little of fresh rosemary can go a long way. 
• Rubbed Sage – I like to use rubbed sage because I think it does a better job at dispersing the flavor. Rubbed Sage is different from ground sage in how it is made, the texture of rubbed sage is light and fluffy mix whereas ground sage is more of a traditional dried herb that is ground up. You can substitute ground sage just use ½ teaspoon instead of 1 full teaspoon. 
• Salt – And of course a little salt to help flavor everything.
• Carrots – Carrots are a nice addition in this recipe to due to texture, they are a little crunchier than the rest of the produce so they are a nice mix with the soft squash, sweet potato, and apples. 
• Sweet Potato – You will want to pick a sweet potato on the smaller side. 
• Onion – An onion is really great in this recipe because it helps balance out some of the sweeter produce so I wouldn’t skip the onion! You can use a sweet onion, yellow onion, or even a white onion. 
• Acorn Squash – In my opinion such a delicious squash! Did you know you can eat the skin of an acorn squash! Just make sure you give it a quick clean first and no need to peel the skin off before using. If you don’t like the skin though feel free to peel the skin off or do it as you are eating. Also you can roast the seeds just like you would a pumpkin!
• Cranberries – I love cranberries and this is another perfect addition that helps balance the sweetness in the dish. For these photographs I did use cranberries that I had frozen. You can use fresh or frozen cranberries, either will work!
• Apple – For the apple you will want to make sure you have a hard/baking variety. Honeycrisp, Jonagold, Braeburn, Mutu/Crispin, Winesap, Pink Lady, or even Granny Smith are just a few of the many options! Just make sure that when you bite into the apple you have more of a crisp har dbite rather than a soft one. 
• Bacon – Just a little bacon for good measure. The two slices can get baked right on top and then crumbled up before serving!

For a complete detailed list of the ingredients continue towards the bottom of the page.

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 450º F.

In a small bowl mix the olive oil, chopped rosemary, sage, and salt.

Clean all fruits and vegetables. Peel and cut carrots into coins. Peel and dice sweet potatoes into bite size pieces. Peel and slice the onion. Deseed the acorn squash and slice into small pieces. Slice the apple into wedges.

Place all prepared fruits and vegetables onto a sheet pan. Gently pour about half of the olive oil & spice mixture evenly over everything. Mix everything on the sheet pan so they are evenly covered in the olive oil mixture. Spread everything to a single layer on the pan. 

Place the chicken thighs and bacon evenly on top of the fruits and vegetables.

Use a spoon to scoop and brush the remaining oil and herb mixture onto each of the chicken thighs.

Transfer to the oven and roast for 35-40 minutes until the chicken reaches an internal temperature of 165º F. Let rest 5 minutes before serving.

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Original Post:

Most of my favorite recipes are the ones that just organically happen. Not that I don’t love sitting and planning out recipes but there is something I love about meals that just naturally come together with no prepping and little thought. These meals just happen and as you sit there eating you think to yourself, ‘I sure hope I can recreate this recipe again because it is so good it needs to be shared’. Well this One Pan Fall Harvest Chicken Dinner happens to be one of these thrown together dinners that I have now recreated many times because let me tell you it is so good.

This meal came to be about 5pm on a Saturday night when we decided last minute to have a few people over for dinner. I was planning on whipping something up with a family pack of chicken thighs I had in the fridge for dinner but now I had to ensure there was going to be enough food for everyone. So I started looking around my kitchen, it being the middle of fall I had a lot of fall flavors hanging out. So I went for it, I decided lets just make a Fall Harvest dinner!

I started with some leftover squash, some cranberries, grabbed a sweet potato, a couple of carrots. It was a great beginning looking around more I grabbed an apple from our apple picking stash. I had a good pile of veggies (and fruits) going so I moved on to spices. I started by looking at my herb garden to see what was fresh, Rosemary, I love Rosemary and it goes perfectly with fall flavors. To match the Rosemary I knew Rubbed Sage would marry the whole pan together. I quick marinade the chicken while I chopped up the fruits and vegetables for the ‘fall harvest’. I mixed the fall harvest together with olive oil, rosemary, and sage. The chicken was then placed upon the fall harvest, it was missing something but i couldn’t quite decide and then Bam, bacon. I grabbed a few pieces cut them into small strips and sprinkled them on top, voila! Into the oven for 40 minutes and you have yourself a One Pan Fall Harvest Chicken Dinner.