I made really tasty stuffed chicken breasts the other night. (I keep meaning to photograph these yummy dishes so that I can post them, but I keep forgetting. Sorry ’bout that!) Anyway, back to the chicken…I’ve made stuffed breast two different ways now. The first way involved taking a boneless skinless breast and pounding it out, then rolling it back up with the filling inside, coating, and baking. Unfortunately with that meal, the breasts turned out rather tough. Not sure if that was a result of the pounding or what, but I decided to try a more traditional way this time around. I modified a recipe that my mom used to make, though she teased me about calling it her recipe since I’d changed so much about it in the end.
For these stuffed chicken breasts, I bought skin-on, ribs-attached breasts. I prepped four chicken breasts by rinsing and patting them dry. I stirred together a mixture of 1/2 cup of cheese, 1 egg, 2 Tbsp. diced onion, salt, pepper, 1 Tbsp. chopped green onion, 1/2 cup diced broccoli, 1/4 cup diced cauliflower, and 3 chopped up (cooked) slices of bacon. I pulled the skin on each breast back a little (you don’t want to pull too much of the skin away around the edges, but you do want to have it loose over the center of the breast to make a pocket) and stuffed as much filling as I could under the skin. Then I tucked the skin back down and brushed it with melted butter to make the skin nice and golden and crispy.
I baked as usual (I’m never very specific with times or temperatures when I’m baking, but it’s pretty intuitive if you’ve baked chicken before, probably between 45 minutes to an hour at about 375 degrees). I served the chicken breasts with sauteed cabbage, chard, onions, and grated carrots, and the butter mashed potatoes mentioned below. A yummy meal, my attempt at German-style heartiness.
