Stuffed Chicken-Again!

Is it possible to have a food preparation obsession?

I apparently am enamored with stuffing chicken breasts. This time it was cooked center cut bacon, pepper Boursin cheese and chopped Italian basil form my own herb garden! The only key tool you need is an oven proof skillet because you will cook the chicken once it's stuffed for 4 minutes on each side and then in a 450 degree oven for 20 minutes.

I decided to make a very light side and settled on a mixed green and spinach salad, lightly dressed with red wine vinegar and topped with Asiago cheese.

Wonder if I went on a stuffed chicken diet how that would work out?

Got anything you like to stuff your chicken with??

Reader Recipe: Spicy Buffalo Style Stuffed Chicken

I love when readers send in recipes they create or suggest for me to try. This one comes from reader (and former high-school classmate) Michelle. She sent me the link to George Duran's Spicy Buffalo Style Stuffed Chicken Breasts because obviously she knows my obsession with stuffed chicken!

It's a super easy recipe but you know me...I can never seem to follow one exactly! In this case, I decided not to make my own buffalo sauce but use a sauce made by a favorite local place of my husband's, Lendy's Cafe. Otherwise I followed the recipe as indicated.

I also decided to get a little creative. I LOVE buffalo chicken but I like dipping it in or eating it with something cool. So with a search of my fridge I saw we had leftover coleslaw dressing (Marie's makes a light version we love) and we had celery...so I made my own "slaw" of shredded celery and the dressing with a little shredded orange bell pepper added for flavor and color.

The finished product plated...and delicious!

The great thing about this recipe is I think you could use any cheese and sauce combination you like...super simple and simply tasty.

Stuffed Chicken-Everybody's Doing It!

I had a mini-brain meltdown yesterday: I left home yesterday morning and never put together dinner. Clearly the calendar said "crock-pot chicken" and I ignored it. So that afternoon as I talked with hubby about plans for the evening, the realization of no planned dinner occurred to me. Then he saved me: I'll be working a bit late tonight. Whew! That would give me time to run by the grocery store for a few things.

I knew I still had some cooked chopped bacon and fresh spinach left over and as I have said before, the man loves chicken so I grabbed a package of boneless skinless breasts to make a dish with that and the bacon and spinach. Then I remembered a friend had given us some wing sauce from one of our favorite places. Hmmmm...spicy chicken needs blue cheese so I picked up a wedge (on sale even!) of blue cheese.

I had previous experience stuffing chicken as I made my way through Cooking Light's newest issue, but I wanted something different and I really wanted to use that wing sauce. Enter Cooks.com and  blue cheese stuffed chicken breast recipes that I knew I could adapt.

I pounded out the chicken breasts into relatively even cutlets. I made a mixture with the fresh spinach, the bacon, 1/2 cup sour cream and some crumbled blue cheese (I mixed the filling in the sour cream container! I divided the filling out evenly and put some at the end of each breast. I carefully rolled each one up and secured with toothpicks. Then, I coated each rolled up chicken with the wing sauce I had poured in a bowl. Next, I dredged the chicken in breadcrumbs. I heated an oven proof skillet with a small amount of olive oil on medium high heat.

When the oil began to smoke, I added the chicken. I carefully browned them on each side. (You have to be careful to let each side brown sufficiently or you can lose breading.) Once browned, the entire skillet was placed in a 450 degree oven for 30 minutes.

Husband said make again...and that's all I need for praise!