Gluten Free Jalapeno Stuffed Chicken

Last week here in Utah the temperatures got into the 80’s, so we turned on our swamp cooler for the first time of the season… and it didn’t work. Luckily, my awesome father-in-law came by on Tuesday evening to help my husband fix it. My mother-in-law and brother-in-law were coming also, so we decided to make them dinner as a thank you for their help. The only problem was, we decided this halfway through the day and I didn’t have anything planned for dinner yet.

I started scouring allrecipes.com to find something yummy, easy, and that used ingredients I already had on hand (I had no desire to go to the store that day). I found a recipe that looked promising and gave it a try: Jalapeno Stuffed Chicken II. 

It turned out great!

As I usually do, I altered the recipe a bit. Plus I made a second kind of stuffed chicken, so there were two different options (in case anyone didn’t like jalapenos).

Here’s how I made them (I was in a hurry, so I didn’t get any prep pictures… sorry). (And as far as amounts go, that depends on how many people you’re cooking for. It’s actually a really easy basic recipe, so you don’t actually need amounts. Just ingredients and how to put it together.) (Also, this has a bunch of my random notes. If you prefer to copy and print a version that doesn’t have them, that’s at the bottom.):

Gluten Free Jalapeno Stuffed Chicken

Ingredients

• Chicken - Chicken breasts are best for stuffed chicken, but I only had tenders, so that’s what I used.
• Optional: 1 (16 ounce) bottle Italian dressing (I hardly had any Italian dressing left and not much time to marinate, so you really couldn’t taste the Italian. Meaning you really could skip this if you wanted and it would still be good, but I’m putting it in because I think it’ll taste great.)
• Jalapeno peppers, quartered lengthwise and seeded (if you like hot you can leave some of the seeds)
• 1 package cream cheese, softened
• Bacon

Directions:

1. Marinate the chicken in the Italian dressing for at least 2 hours, if you’re going to do this step.
2. Cook the bacon. Try not to eat it all. You’ll need one piece for each chicken. You might want 2 if it’s a chicken breast. (I only like crispy bacon, so I always pre-cook my bacon before wrapping any chicken in it.)
3. {re-heat the grill then cut open the chicken. Spread cream cheese on a jalapeno slice and put it in the chicken. If the jalapeno doesn’t fit the whole length of the chicken add more (with cream cheese). If you’re using breasts, you might want even more jalapenos. It’s good to have each bite of chicken have a cream cheese jalapeno in it.
4. Close the chicken and wrap with bacon. Use toothpick to hold it together if you need.
5. Cook chicken on grill. (Since I used chicken tenderloins and the filling wanted to spill out, we put tin foil down on the grill first. I thought we wouldn’t get the grill lines on it doing it this way, but we did. I love grill marks.)
6. Enjoy!

Other details: 

• I don’t remember exactly how I made the second kind of stuffed chicken, but it wasn’t the star, so oh well. Basically, after cooking all the bacon, I dumped the grease and then put cream cheese in the bacon pan. I added chopped spinach, chopped bacon and garlic salt. It’s actually a great base for stuffing chicken. It could have used onions and maybe something else. If you do this be sure to taste the mixture before calling it good and putting it in your chicken. Grill the same. It will be good if you make sure you put enough seasoning in :).
• I also served a green salad and curried rice pilaf (I’ll be sharing that recipe soon). Yum!
• This was the first week I’ve ever used jalapenos. I got them to make fresh salsa (my favorite!) and decided to try this out. I always thought they were just too hot, but if you remove the seeds they don’t have much heat at all. Just be sure not to touch your eyes after cutting them up.

And here’s the recipe without my random notes, in case you’d prefer to copy, paste, and print it that way (I even put the “gluten free” on a separate line for those of you who don’t need to copy the gluten free ):

Gluten Free

Jalapeno Stuffed Chicken

Ingredients

• Chicken breasts, sliced open butterfly-style
• 1 (16 ounce) bottle Italian dressing
• Jalapeno peppers, quartered lengthwise and seeded
• 1 package cream cheese, softened
• Bacon

Directions:

1. Marinate the chicken in the Italian dressing for at least 2 hours.
2. Cook the bacon then pre-heat grill.
3. Cut open the chicken. Spread cream cheese on jalapeno slices and put it in the chicken.
4. Close the chicken and wrap with bacon. Use toothpick to hold it together if needed.
5. Cook chicken on grill.
6. Enjoy!