Chicken marbella
- Published: 31 Mar 25
- Updated: 26 May 25
Learn how to make 1980s dinner party favourite chicken marbella with our easy recipe. This chicken dish is packed with olives, prunes and capers.
- Why it’s so good: Chicken marbella is essentially a traybake, relying on a long marination to infuse the chicken with bags of sweet, sour, salty and umami flavours.
- Global influences: There’s heaps of garlic, olive oil, white wine, bay leaves and capers, giving the dish a distinctly Med vibe, but the addition of prunes and brown sugar provides a higher than normal level of sweetness that takes it into North African tagine territory.
- Did you know? Chicken marbella was created by a duo of New York cooks, Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso, who catapulted the dish to fame in their 1982 cookbook The Silver Palate.
- Updating the dish: This recipe is true to the original from the 1980s. It does contain a little less brown sugar, which we think dials down the sweetness and improves the balance of flavours in the dish.
Try more flavour-packed chicken traybakes.
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Serves 4 -
Prep time 10 min, plus overnight marinating. Cook time 1 hour 5 min
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Recipe from April 2025 Issue
Nutrition
Nutrition: per serving
- Calories
- 832kcals
- Fat
- 51g (12g saturated)
- Protein
- 55g
- Carbohydrates
- 24g (23g sugars)
- Fibre
- 4.8g
- Salt
- 1.9g
delicious. tips
When marinating chicken, longer isn’t always necessarily better. Any acidity in the marinade will start to ‘cook’ the chicken, breaking down the proteins. Let this happen for too long and it’ll turn mushy once cooked. There’s some acidity in this marinade from the vinegar, so you don’t want to leave it longer than 24 hours.
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