You can't beat a delicious meal of a Bacon Wrapped Boneless Chicken Breast, especially when the bacon completely envelopes a beautiful chicken breast, ham, veggies and your favorite cheese. It's a meal in one. Add some crusty bread and veggies to make it a complete meal.
Wrap up your Bacon Boneless Chicken and relax while it bakes all the savory flavors together. It’s easy! With just a few bacon slices, a boneless skinless chicken breast, sliced ham, cheese, sliced veggies and a few herbs you can have one of the tastiest and easiest meals to make. I like to purchase the already boned out and skinless chicken breast to save me a little time. Plus, I don’t like wrestling with the chicken to get the bones out or the skin off.
There are a few steps to this, but it’s very to assemble. Clean the veggies, pound the chicken thin, shake on a few herbs and lay out the bacon strips and roll it all up. You can always purchase already cleaned veggies to save you another step. But it’s well worth the few steps you take to enjoy a delicious dinner. Sides can be just about any veggie with a crusty bread and butter. MMMMM...I can taste it now.
This recipe feeds two.
With sides of veggies and crusty bread, you’ll probably have leftovers for the next day or for sandwiches. It all depends on how large your boneless and skinless chicken breasts are.
Prepare your pan:
- I like to use a two-part broiler pan we saved from our previous oven which conked out on us a number of years ago. The new oven did not have a broiler pan so we kept the old pan since we use it for larger pieces of meat for holidays like Thanksgiving, Easter, New Years, etc. I have even used a metal cookie cooling rack set into a rimmed baking pan so that the juices drip off, and the meat does not sit in all that grease.
- To make clean up easy, lay some foil on the bottom of the pan (under the rack) so all the drippings accumulate on the foil which is easy to pull out after it cools, and toss it away.
Preheat your oven to 350F degrees, about 10 minutes before you’re ready to bake your scrumptious chicken dinner.
Gather up your Ingredients:
2 Chicken breasts, boneless and skinless
6 Slices deli ham
6 Slices cheese, Gouda, Provolone or Parmesan
6-10 Slices Bacon, thin sliced
10 Thin slices of peppers, optional
10 Thin slices of onions, optional
Herbs and spices, your favorite
Assemble your Bacon Wrapped Boneless Chicken Breasts:
- On a cutting board or counter covered with plastic wrap, lay out one chicken breast. The plastic wrap should cover at least twice as much space as the chicken breast. As you pound the chicken breast will expand to take up more space on the plastic wrap.
- Place another large piece of plastic wrap on top of the chicken breast.
Using the flat side of a kitchen mallet, pound the chicken breast so it is at least ½ as thick as the original. The thinner you get the breast, the faster it will bake in the oven.
- Repeat with the second chicken breast laid out on a clean piece of plastic wrap and cover it with a second piece of plastic wrap.
- Take the top piece of plastic wrap off each piece of chicken.
- Shake your favorite herbs on the top side of the chicken. I used an Italian mixed blend along with a few shakes of garlic powder and onion powder.
- Layer and overlap 2-3 slices of ham on each of the chicken breasts. It’s up to you if you want to use all of the ham.
- Layer and overlap 2-3 slices of cheese on top of the ham on each chicken breast. I did not have sliced cheese in the refrigerator, so I used shredded parmesan cheese. It melted nicely and was delicious! One time I even used one slice each of flavored Gouda, Provolone and Parmesan for more flavor.
- Layer a few very thin slices of pepper and onion on top of the chicken. I mixed yellow and red pepper, thinly sliced, to add some bright color to the final product when it’s sliced.
- Using the bottom layer of plastic wrap as a holder and guide to roll everything together as you roll it away from you.
- Roll up the chicken breast tightly. As you roll it up, pull off the plastic wrap (toward you) since you don’t want to bake the plastic wrap into the chicken.
- Lay the tightly rolled-up chicken breasts onto a plate, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour. This will make wrapping the chicken in the bacon a little easier.
- When there are about 10 minutes left for the chicken breasts to chill, spread out two separate pieces of plastic wrap on the counter or cutting board. Lay out 3-5 strips of bacon side by side on each. You will want to overlap each piece of bacon just a little so the bacon fat engulfs the entire chicken breast as they bake so the chicken breast does not dry out. The number of bacon strips you use to wrap each chicken breast will depend on how wide each chicken breast is.
- When you have the bacon strips laid out take the rolled-up chicken breasts out of the refrigerator. Lay one rolled up breast at the base of one set of bacon strips.
- Carefully, and using the plastic wrap under the bacon, roll the bacon up and around the rolled chicken breast. As you roll it away from you, pull the plastic wrap out of the way and continue rolling the bacon around the chicken.
- Keep the roll somewhat tight so it’s easy to lift off the plastic wrap and place it on your baking pan.
- Place the bacon wrapped chicken on the baking pan with the loose outside ends of the bacon underneath. That way, nothing will fall apart in the oven. No toothpicks are needed to hold the rolled meat together.
- Put the rolled bacon wrapped chicken on the pan, into the preheated oven.
- Bake for 40-60 minutes at 350F degrees. The timing may be different depending on how thick your bacon is. I like to use a very thin bacon so that it gets crispy. If you don’t think the bacon underneath the chicken roll is getting done enough, carefully rotate the rolled meat so the ends are in the up position and bake a few minutes. One time I even broiled that bottom section of bacon to crisp it up. But, don’t walk away. You must watch it closely while it broils or you could have overdone bacon or even black bacon.
- The bacon should be nice and crispy when you’re done. If you didn’t overstuff it with a lot of cheese, there should be little cheese that has seeped out.
- Take the pan of chicken out of the oven and set on a heat safe space or onto hot pads on the counter.
- With a large spatula or a couple large forks, lift each bacon wrapped chicken breast onto a serving platter or directly onto dinner plates.
- Serve with veggies, crusty bread and butter and enjoy!
This is an easy and tasty meal for two. Leftovers are delicious, too, when you slice the chicken into pretty little rounds to rest onto toast points. Spread the toast with a tangy mayo or garlic aioli or the spread as a dip.
Try some mustards or even barbecue sauces for dipping the chicken. You'll be pleasantly surprised by the different flavor combinations you can create. We have even slathered barbecue sauce on the chicken rolls when they are nearing completion, letting sauce caramelize of the last 10 minutes or so.
And, the sliced leftovers will be delicious! Use the slices as a snack or in a sub sandwich roll with lettuce, mustards, mayo, with pickle spears, jalapeno peppers and onions. Try adding some barbecue sauce or oil and raspberry vinegar dressing for other flavor combos. Try the slices on garlic rounds. Yum!
You can easily change up this recipe by substituting spicy herbs, hot peppers inside the wrap, or even serve it with a gravy over the top of the bacon wrapped roll. Mash potatoes or scalloped potatoes or butternut squash would make for delicious sides. However you enjoy your Bacon Wrapped Chicken Breast, “Bake your own Memories!”
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