12 Fall Chicken Dinners with Pears

I buy pears every October with good intentions and find them soft on the counter four days later.

Cooking them into dinner is how I stopped wasting them.

And I’d take pears over apples here every single time.

Pears collapse into a pan sauce, and apples sit in it in chunks bringing an acidity you spend the rest of the recipe balancing back out.

Twelve below.

1. Balsamic Chicken with Pears

Chicken breasts, pear wedges, dried cherries, and balsamic, all in one pan.

The balsamic goes in at the very end.

Add it early and you’ll taste the bitterness right through the dish.

Buy pears that are still hard.

A ripe one turns to mush in the two minutes it takes to warm through.

Rice or quinoa underneath, since there’s more sauce here than you’d expect and it’s the best part of the plate.

2. Sheet Pan Chicken with Pears, Walnuts and Blue Cheese

One pan, and the blue cheese doesn’t go on until it comes out of the oven.

Thighs, pear wedges and red onion all roast together until the pears catch some color at the edges.

Then you crumble the cheese over the hot pan and leave it alone.

It melts itself.

Toast the walnuts separately and throw them on at the end.

A full roast turns them bitter on you.

The arugula underneath wilts from the heat of the pan and that’s all you want it to do.

3. Maple Glazed Chicken with Pears

Halve the pears and put them cut side down.

That flat side sits in the maple and the pan juices and caramelizes while the chicken cooks above it.

Cut through the stem, then scoop the core out with a melon baller so you’ve got a hollow to hold the glaze.

Forty-five minutes, four people.

4. Garam Masala Baked Chicken Thighs with Pears

Warm spice does more for cooked fruit than herbs ever will.

That’s why this one works where a lot of chicken and fruit dishes just taste like a dessert that went wrong.

Garam masala on the thighs, pears and red onion underneath, whole skillet into the oven.

Bone-in thighs take long enough that the pears go jammy around them.

Skip the rice and get flatbread.

It handles that sauce better.

5. Roasted Chicken Thighs with Pear Mustard Sauce

Mustard, pan drippings, and pears cooked until they’ve fallen apart.

This is the one to make if sweet and savory together isn’t usually your thing.

Use whole grain mustard.

Dijon dissolves into the liquid and you lose it entirely.

Keep the skin on.

The rendered fat is what the whole sauce is built on.

6. Chicken, Pear and Spinach Skillet

Cutlets, so it’s done in about the time it takes to cook rice.

The spinach wilts in the pan once the chicken comes out, and the diced pear and shallot go in last so they stay crisp.

Pound the breasts flat first with a flat meat pounder.

Otherwise the thin end is dry before the thick end is cooked, every time.

It’s fine over egg noodles with no greens at all.

7. Braised Chicken with Pears

This is the long one.

Use something with a lid that goes from the stove to the oven, like an enameled cast iron braiser.

Brown the thighs, then everything goes in together and cooks down until the pears are soft enough to mash into the sauce with a spoon.

It’s better the next day, so make it the night before if you can.

8. Portuguese Chicken, Pear and Potato Tray Bake

Chicken tenderloins, potatoes, brussels sprouts, pears, one tray.

Cut the potatoes smaller than everything else.

They take the longest and nobody wants to be the person serving hard potatoes.

The pears go in late or they’ll be gone by the time the sprouts crisp up.

Paprika and garlic do the seasoning, so nothing sweet goes in beyond the fruit.

9. Miso-Ginger Roasted Chicken and Pears

No honey, no maple, nothing sweet at all.

Miso and ginger, and the pears come out tasting savory, which is not what you expect looking at them.

Miso browns fast, so brush it on partway through the roast.

Raw scallions over the top at the end give you something sharp against all that soft fruit.

Forty-five minutes, four servings, gluten free as long as your miso is.

10. Pan-Seared Chicken with Pear Slaw

The pears here stay raw.

They get shredded with celery into a cold slaw that goes on the plate against hot sliced chicken.

Use a hard pear and the coarse side of a stainless steel box grater.

Anything softer and you’ll have mush before you’ve even dressed it.

Dress it at the last second too, because cut pear browns faster than cut apple.

11. Pear and Blue Cheese Stuffed Chicken

Same pairing as number two up there, except the cheese is inside the chicken.

Cut the pocket from the thick side and stop before the knife comes through the other side.

A split breast leaks everything it’s holding, and you end up with cheese on the pan and none in the chicken.

Toothpicks along the seam are plenty.

Get an instant read meat thermometer in there too, because a stuffed breast gives you nothing to look at.

A thin mustard cream sauce over the top stops the blue cheese being the only loud thing on the plate.

12. Honey Pear Glazed Chicken Thighs

Honey catches faster than maple, so this glaze goes on later than you’d think.

Brush it twice toward the end and let the pears finish underneath it.

Boneless thighs, not breasts, because they hold on long enough for the glaze to set without drying out.

Notes on Which Pears to Use

Bosc holds its shape through roasting and braising, and that’s what most of these want.

Bartlett breaks down fastest, so it’s good in a sauce and bad in wedges you want to still see on the plate.

Anjou sits in the middle and is the easiest to find, so it’s your default when a recipe doesn’t say.

Buy them a shade underripe for anything going in the oven.

Press near the stem, not the belly.

The belly lies.

Leave the skin on for roasting, since it’s what keeps a wedge in one piece.

Peel only for the raw slaw, where you’d feel it.

A squeeze of lemon on cut pears buys you about the same window it buys cut apples.

Tips for Serving and Leftovers

Anything with a pan sauce wants a starch underneath it that soaks, not one sitting politely on the side.

Rice, quinoa, polenta, egg noodles.

All of them beat roasted potatoes here.

The tray bakes are the exception, since the potatoes are already in the pan taking on the drippings.

Cooked pears go soft overnight and softer the night after.

So the braises and the jammy skillet dishes are your make-ahead options, and the slaw is the one you make fresh.

Reheat covered with a splash of stock and stay out of the microwave.

The sauce breaks and the fruit turns to paste.

For more chicken that holds up on a weeknight, the crockpot meals with chicken breast roundup covers the hands-off end of it.

And the fall pumpkin coffee recipes cover the other half of the season.