This chicken is amazing! I so often hear people say they are “so bored” with the same old chicken dishes, so I love when I come up with a fun new chicken dish to share. We are all busy people and it’s easy just to keep making the same old thing because we know how to do it quickly! Pocketing and stuffing chicken is so easy and adds a whole new dimension onto the whole “we’re having chicken for dinner again” idea. We eat a lot of chicken in our house and I’m always trying to create different ways to make it fun and it works out even better when it’s fun, yummy and the best one yet, the kids even eat it! Well, I had two of the three on this one, it was fun and it was super yummy! It also helped that I whipped up an awesome Mac to go with it, it was a cheesy night I guess, but that is for another post because that recipe was amazing too! We called it our “Mac” night since we went to see Toby Mac, Mandisa and a whole bunch of other amazing performers last night. Three years almost of living in the south now and I’m still often awed by the little things like living 5 minutes from an international airport, be it the most expensive one in the country, and being 10 minutes from a civic center where there is always hockey and concerts and all kind of fun! I never had that luxury before and I never knew how cool and convenient it really is!

Back to the bird. This is a must try, trust me! I have made a very similar stuffed chicken that is posted here on my blog, cranberry and brie stuffed chicken and that was so good, but this, my husband and I liked this even better! My cranberry and brie stuffed chicken breasts is always my most popular post, it gets a lot of traffic! I hope this one does too! This is what you need and what you will need to do to make this for yourself!

Ingredients:

5-7 large fairly thick chicken breasts (you want them thicker so you have enough space to pocket and fill them)

2 blocks of cream cheese

1 1/2 cups craisins (more if you wish)

1 tsp rosemary

1 medium onion, diced

black pepper to taste

Olive Oil (to coat your chicken breast before breading)

Approx. 2 cups of Italian bread crumbs

 

Directions:

If your chicken is frozen, defrost, wash and set in a large baking dish. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Carefully cut a pocket into the thickest part of your chicken breasts. Be careful to not cut through but cut as far into the breast as you can allowing for a nice pocket to fill. When each piece is done, set aside.

In a large mixing bowl place your cream cheese, onions, rosemary and pepper and beat with an electric mixer for about a minute or until the cream cheese is softened and has has a whipped look. Add the crasins and stir together until mixed well. Now fill each chicken pocket, filling well. I only filled 5 chicken breasts, I had 7 but made two of them differently for my kids. I had extra cream cheese mixture left so I put it in a small baking dish and baked it, it’s nice to have some extra. If you make 7, it should fill each one perfectly.

All your chicken should now be in the baking dish. Drizzle liberally with olive oil then rub the chicken carefully on each side with the oil. On a plate add your bread crumbs. Coat each chicken breast with the bread crumbs then place back in the baking dish.  Bake at 350 degrees for approx. 45 minutes of until chicken is cooked completely.

I hope you give this recipe a try!