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9.01.2011

Meal 1 - Cheese Stuffed Chicken

Alright well it is the first of the month which means my newest endeavor of actually cooking supper every (almost every!) night this month.  I'm doing this to save money as we were spending around $250 every month on eating out!!!  Wayyyyy too much, plus not healthy at all!  So I went through cookbooks and websites to find recipes that sounded good.  Then I assigned one to almost every day this month (I left 4 days without a recipe for times when we might eat out for something special or make a pizza or I'm not home to make dinner.  Then I made my grocery list for the next 2 weeks of menus and went grocery shopping today.  I only spent about $30 more than I usually do!  So on to the meal!

Tonight I made Cheese Stuffed Chicken which I found on one of my absolute favorite websites.  Once a Month Mom.  Which is freezer cooking (see my earlier blog).  But they also have recipes on their website and this one I had bookmarked as soon as I had seen it.  And boy am I glad I did!  It was AMAZING!!!!

All you needed for this recipe was 5 total ingredients...and I only had to purchase one this shopping trip!

Ingredients:

  • 1 pound boneless skinless chicken breasts (mine were frozen and I marinated them while they thawed out)
  • 0.5 cups Lawry’s Seasoned Salt Marinade
  • 8 ounces Pepper Jack Cheese, shredded (I had slices that I had to use up)
  • 1 cup Panko Bread Crumbs
  • 0.5 cups ground french fried onion rings

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Spray a baking pan with cooking spray.  Cut chicken breasts in half lengthwise, basically fillet the breast so that you have to long flat pieces.** Marinate chicken breasts in Lawry’s Seasoned Salt Marinade for 30-90 minutes in a gallon sized zippered bag.  Remove chicken and add shredded cheese. Roll chicken and secure with toothpicks.  Place bread crumbs and ground french fried onion rings in a shallow bowl.  Dip the chicken back in the marinade, then place in the crumbs, coating the chicken evenly. Place the chicken on prepared pan and bake at 400 degrees for about 35 – 40 minutes or until done.
**If you are limited on time you can simply cut a pocket in the chicken breasts and insert cheese instead of rolling.

So like I said I used frozen chicken breasts and they are always so huge so I only used 2.  They marinated in the sauce while they thawed out.  I didn't measure the marinade, just poured in what looked good.  Then I crushed up a handful of french fried onions and it just happened to measure out to 1/2 cup.  Instead of cutting the chicken in half I pounded my chicken.  I just left it in the ziploc bag and pounded it with a meat hammer.  Since my chicken breasts were so large I then cut them lengthwise to make 4 smaller pieces. 
I then laid the pieces of pepperjack cheese on each piece:
Then I rolled each one as best as I could, but I didn't have toothpicks so I just held them tight.  I didn't need to re-dip them in the marinade as they were super wet.  So then I just rolled them in the bread crumb/onion mixture.  I could have easily halved the amount of bread crumbs, I ended up throwing a ton of it out.
Then I placed them all in a greased dish:
Then popped them in the 400 degree oven for 35 minutes.
While they were cooking I shucked and boiled some corn on the cob to eat as well:
I just threw the corn in a pot of boiling water with salt for 10 minutes.  YUM!
Then the final product!!
And yes it was as tasty as it looks!  Mmm I took the pieces with the burned cheese edges and I devoured em!! LOL My husband said the 1st meal was a success!
This recipe is definitely going in the recipe box.  It was super easy and cheap and yummy!  Technically the only item I bought was the french fried onions.  I had chicken in the freezer, cheese in the fridge, breadcrumbs and marinade in the pantry.  And the corn was even free as it was the "free item" at my husband's grocery store this week.  So this meal virtually cost me nothing!! 

I then cut the corn off of the remaining cobs and threw it in the freezer for tomorrow night's meal actually.  Love it!!

This is actually turning out to be more fun than I thought it would be...can't wait for tomorrow!

2 comments:

  1. I'm headed out to the grocery store today and just added these items to my list (well the marinade and cheese, the rest I have) for dinner this coming Sunday!!! Looks amazing and super family friendly....

    I have to say I'm pretty excited about this journey for you ... I get to learn too :)

    Thanks for sharing

    ReplyDelete