This Bacon Wrapped Jalapeño Popper Chicken is the all-time most popular recipe on this website. It is an easy but fun weeknight dinner meal that everyone will love! Plus the active preparation time is only 10 minutes.
This easy to prepare dinner recipe captures the flavors of one of my favorite guilty pleasure appetizers. Who doesn't love Jalapeño Poppers? This takes the appetizer and turns it into a meal.
The process of preparing Bacon Wrapped Jalapeño Popper Chicken simple. Chicken is pounded thin, and stuffed with a combination of cream cheese, chopped jalapeños, and cheddar cheese, before it is wrapped in bacon.
It’s a pretty fool-proof meal that anyone would love. It takes about an hour to make from start to finish, but the active preparation time is only 10 minutes.
I tested this Bacon Wrapped Jalapeño Popper Chicken recipe a few times to get it perfect. First you want to pound out the chicken so that it is nice and thin and easy to wrap around the cheese and jalapeño fillings.
The next trick is to make sure that the cream cheese doesn’t melt out of the chicken breast. There are two keys to preventing this.
The first is to use a big solid chunk of cream cheese – and don’t use whipped cream cheese, it will melt too much, and ooze out of the chicken.
Secondly, you need to carefully wrap up the chicken. Make sure that the chicken is completely wrapped around the cream cheese, jalapeño, and cheddar, and that the bacon is nice and tight to hold it all together.
Adding the cheese on top of the jalapeños also helps to hold everything together.
I promise this is easier than it might sound, but the end result isn't as appetizing or delicious if you don't take care with these steps.
If you want to add an extra kick of spice to the Bacon Wrapped Jalapeño Popper Chicken, leave some of the seeds in the jalapeño. If you want to add a touch of smokey flavor, add some poblano pepper. If you want a mild spice level, remove all of the seeds from the jalapeño.
And a quick note on chopping jalapeños, your skin will absorb the spiciness and your skin will become irritated if you aren't careful. I like to use thongs instead of my hands to hold the jalapeños in place as I chop them (this is a skill worth acquiring). And if you wear contact lenses, you can't go wrong with taking them out first, because trust me, taking contacts out with spicy fingers isn't a mistake you want to make.
If you want to shave off a little time you can buy thin cut chicken breasts at the grocery store. And if you want to make this recipe slightly healthier, you can use one slice of prosciutto to wrap up each chicken breast. Prosciutto has less fat and fewer calories compared to bacon, and I love how prosciutto gets crispy when you bake it, I think it is even better than bacon (bold statement, I know).
This recipe has been pinned over 200,000 times on Pinterest! The Pinterest post comments have lots of great suggestions. If you want to add an extra burst of flavor to the recipe, sprinkle the chicken with garlic powder and onion salt in addition to salt and pepper. And another way of preventing the cream cheese from melting too much is to hollow out a jalapeño and stuff the cream cheese inside.
How to Serve Bacon Wrapped Jalapeño Popper Chicken:
I recommend serving this chicken with steakhouse style twice baked potatoes and a side of sriracha parmesan roasted broccoli. The broccoli strikes the perfect balance of cheesy and spicy and roasting the broccoli maintains its fresh crunchiness. My husband loves this side dish even though he usually refuses to eat broccoli. The steakhouse style potatoes are scooped out, mashed with cheese and sour cream, and then baked again. The skins are crispy and salty and I always eat every last bite.
How to Make Bacon Wrapped Jalapeño Popper Chicken:
Bacon Wrapped Jalapeño Popper Chicken
Ingredients
- 4 Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts
- 4 ounces of Cream Cheese cut into bite chunks (not whipped)
- 4 Jalapenos
- ½ cup Shredded Cheddar Cheese
- 8 slices of Bacon
Instructions
- Start by heating your oven to 300 degrees and then get to chopping the jalapenos. If you like hot spicy heat – leave the seeds. If you want a mild heat, remove the seeds.
- Then move on to pounding out the chicken breasts until they are quite thin. You want them to double in size. Cover the chicken in plastic wrap, and place on a strong surface and use a meat mallet or a cast iron pan to pound them out.
- Next, place a long thin chunk of cream cheese in the center.
- Add jalapeno and cheddar cheese on top, and then wrap the chicken around it.
- Use 2 slices of bacon to wrap around each chicken breast sealing it shut. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
- Place the bacon wrapped chicken breasts in a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil.
- After 45 minutes, remove the chicken from the oven, and drain any bacon fat off the pan.
- Increase the oven temperature to 400 degrees, letting the bacon crisp up for another 10 minutes or as long as necessary.
Want to see some more quick and easy dinner recipes? Here are some of my favorites:
20 Minute Sesame Chicken - A simple healthy weeknight dinner recipe that you can easily customize by adding your favorite vegetables.
Goat Cheese and Vegetable Pasta - This creamy pasta comes together in just minutes and is always a crowdpleaser. The goat cheese gives the sauce an irresistible creaminess.
Chicken Tacos with Cilantro Pesto- A quick taco recipe that is made with rotisserie chicken and an easy homemade cilantro pesto sauce.
Zoodles alla Rustica- A vegetarian version of one of my pasta dishes.
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