This easy to prepare dinner recipe captures the flavors of one of my favorite guilty pleasure appetizers. 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. The 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. 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. 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 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 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 kn0w).
Yields 4
10 minPrep Time
55 minCook Time
1 hr, 5 Total Time
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Ingredients
- 4 Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts
- 4 ounces of Cream Cheese, cut into bit chunks (not whipped)
- 8 Jalapenos
- 1/2 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.
- 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:
Goat Cheese and Vegetable Pasta
Chicken Tacos with Cilantro Pesto
