Stuffed Chicken in Bacon Coats

Happy Nom Nom Monday!  Today's recipe is a Stuffed Chicken in Bacon Coats.  I knew when I saw this recipe in Best-Ever 30-Minute Cookbook (by Jenni Fleetwood), I had to give it a try.  I was hesitant at first, because I thought stuffing a chicken would be beyond my talents in the kitchen.  I don't want to say it was easy, but it wasn't as hard as I was anticipating.  Well worth the payoff for this yummy meat meal.  

Ingredients:

-  2 Chicken Breast (boneless skinless)

-  2 tablespoons of cream cheese

-  1 teaspoon of fresh dill (or chives)

-  4 strips of bacon

- 1 teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 400ºF.  In a small bowl throughly mix the dill and cream cheese together.  The cookbook called for chives instead of dill, but chives are hard to find right now, so I went for dill.  I want to start an indoor herb garden, and I'll grow some chives, so it will be easy to find next time.  

Next, slice pockets into the chicken breast.  I used a very sharp knife, and started by basically drawing a horizontal line across the fattest part of the chicken breast's side.  Then I would peel the meat back as I went, carefully cutting deeper into the breast.  Getting started was definitely the hardest part, but once I got going it wasn't so hard.  

Now split the cream cheese mixture in half, and stuff inside the chicken breast.  Fold the flap of meat of the cream cheese mixture, and press the edges shut with your finger.  

Then wrap the stuffed breast in two bacon strips each, and place in a oven-proof dish.  Before placing in the oven dribble the olive oil over the breasts.  If you have one you can use a basting brush.  We don't have one, so I had to skip that part.  

Finally place the dish in the oven for 25 - 30 minutes.  We have a tiny amount of chives in an outdoor box, so I grabbed a couple of them for garnish.  

This was really good.  I want to stuff all sorts of things into chicken breast now!  I love ham and cheese in a chicken, so that might be next on the list.  I hope you give this a try, I promise you'll enjoy it!  Happy Nom Nom Monday (again), and happy DIYing, chris!