Grilled Spinach Stuffed Chicken
I wish I could take credit for this recipe. It truly belongs to my brother-in-law, Spencer, more often referred to as Uncle Spence. Now, Uncle Spence and I agree and disagree on a lot of things. We are in similar business industries and drive the rest of the family crazy by excitedly dominating the table with insurance talk. We don’t always see eye to eye about where to have said dinner table conversations. Uncle Spence is adventurous in his food outings while I tend to stay on the safe side with ingrediants I know and love. As soon as I started blogging here, I knew Uncle Spence would love to create recipes with me. I told him over dinner and he immediately started talking about how we could wrap chicken in bacon. In my world, anything wrapped in bacon is a hit. This recipe lives up to the bacon hype while adding in spinach and cream cheese to create an amazing pocket of goodness.
Grilled Spinach Stuffed Chicken
Author/Source:
Katie @ Onceamonthmom.com and “Uncle Spence”
Ingredients:
- 1 pound boneless skinless chicken breast
- 2 ounces cream cheese
- 1 teaspoon season salt
- 1 cup frozen spinach
- 6 ounces bacon
Directions:
Preheat grill to high heat. Butterfly chicken breasts and place spinach and cream cheese in the middle. Fold the chicken breast in half and then wrap a slice (or two) of bacon around the middle of the chicken to hold the stuffing in. Place the chicken on the grill over high heat and cook for 5-7 minutes on each side or until chicken is cooked through. Remove from heat and allow to rest for 5 minutes before serving.
Freezing Directions:
Butterfly chicken and stuff according to directions above but do not grill. Flash freeze chicken. Then place in freezer bag, label and freeze. To serve: thaw in fridge. Preheat grill and cook chicken over high heat for 5-7 minutes on each side or until chicken is cooked through. Remove from heat and allow to rest for 5 minutes before serving.
Servings: 4
**conversion chart image provided by Erik Spiekermann
I am going to try this recipe out soon on our charcoal grill. But I like to sauté any greens in a cast iron skillet with garlic powder, onion powder, a tbsp. of bacon grease, and salt and pepper, before adding it to something like this or pizzas, for example. Doing that imparts more flavor to the spinach and you might win some non spinach lovers over, too. You could easily substitute kale for the spinach. My 19 month old son prefers kale to spinach.
Thanks for recipe!
I made a version of this tonight…O.M.G! It was SO delish! I added gorgonzola, kalamata olives, and green onion to the cream cheese/spinach mixture….yum! Also, I cut out the salt since I added olives, but I added a sprinkling of garlic powder to the chicken breast. I had to bake it since I don’t have an outside grill, but it was still wonderful. In fact, because I baked it, there was a cheese sauce that melted out of the chicken which, mixing with the bacon grease was pure heaven!
Full disclosure; when I say “bake” I mean bake in my toaster oven!
Marion, your additions sounds delicious! Glad you shared.
This recipe looks very nice and certainly taste very, very good. I tried to cook it and my family was impressed by the taste, the look was not very nice, but in the end taste counts more. Thanks for sharing.
what does it mean by flash freeze? looks good thanks!
Here’s a great post on it Malissa http://onceamonthmom.com/flash-freezing/
I want the recipe for the Quinoa side you show in the picture! (yummy looking) Is it possible to get that or could you direct me to the recipe? Thanks so much.
Jenn, keep an eye out- I’ll be posting the recipe in a few weeks!
I just found your website through another post & I LOVE it!! Thanks for so many wonderful recipes! I could have used them a couple of years ago when I was cooking week night meals for my family of 5 plus my daughter, her husband & their twin 2 yr olds(both parents working full-time,enough said). Glad to have found it now!
Anyway, about this recipe – Do you think you could just cut a slit in the chicken & stuff it, rather than butterfly it? I think that would work if you mix the spinach & cream cheese,then roll it into a “log” to put it in the chicken.
Judy, Iwelcome! I personally enjoy thinner slices of chicken so butterflying is my preferred method, but as long as you can get the slit big enough to get the cheese in, you should be fine. Let me know how it works out.
Sounds delicious! Do you cook the bacon before you put it in?
Yes sorry we’ll fix that!
I don’t understand Kellie’s question that you replied to. Why are we cooking the bacon? Wouldn’t it just be put on the grill raw wrapped around the raw chicken breast?
Oops you are right Jenny, it’s wrapped raw. No need to cook.
I am just curious how about the placement of the spinach and cream cheese. Do you place frozen spinach in the breast with a slice of 2oz. of cream cheese on top of that? No seasoning inside the breast?
Thanks
You can either put the spinach on top of the cream cheese or on bottom. It won’t actually matter. And no seasoning inside the breast unless you just want to add to it.