Stuffed Chicken Breasts

Confession: I’m obsessed with America’s Test Kitchen.  Yes half their recipes aren’t paleo, but a lot of them actually are fairly real-food centric.  Many of the meat based recipes are pretty darn close to paleo. AND, most importantly, every single recipe of theirs that I have tried so far has turned out well and been absolutely been delicious.  So I dig that a lot.  Pinterest is officially no longer my first stop to find a recipe.

I’m now on day 22 of my Whole Life Challenge.  It hasn’t been perfect, but it’s been good. It’s been great for helping me get me back into good habits, like 7AM Turbo Kick classes and not just eating pizza because the boys must have pizza.

For the sanity of my boys, Friday nights are indeed “pizza night” at our house (though if I didn’t know how to cook, every night would be pizza night for my dear husband).  So last night I decided to make an ATK recipe for myself that I’ve had my eye on for awhile: stuffed chicken breasts.  These chicken breasts are not stuffed with cheese however, no siree.  They are actually stuffed with – more chicken!!  And leeks and mushrooms.  You can find the recipe here, though you will need to be an ATK member like me, to access it…which I would highly recommend becoming. No I do not have an endorsement deal, but I would accept one. 😀

Some of my ingredients!

Sautéing the leeks and mushrooms in butter. I think the recipe called for vegetable oil, but I of course don’t do vegetable oil. I usually sub anything that calls for vegetable oil with ghee, kerrygold butter, or coconut oil.

Snapshot of the cooking process! And yes, I was watching the show as I cooked.

Since I was using organic and smaller chicken breasts, mine did not wrap up as “prettily” as the ones on ATK. They told you they should be about an inch longer and wider than the ones I have here, but oh well.

Even though my chicken breasts were smaller than called for, it ended up working without much filling spilling out! I ended up wasting a lot of the filling mixture though.

Chicken done. Making the pan sauce =).

Got a couple of cute little pinwheels! Not perfect, but good enough for a first attempt.

The tangy pan sauce = delish.

Added some steamed green beans, and viola! Dinner! (And leftovers for lunch tomorrow!)

So I think Friday nights will officially be my “try-a-new-recipe-that-my-boys-probably-wouldn’t-like” night, and it will probably be something from America’s Test Kitchen to ensure something tasty that will help me resist the boy’s pizza.  Or from Practical Paleo, as almost everything I’ve tried from that cookbook has been outstanding as well.

My husband and I don’t really do the super bowl, so tomorrow night I will be attempting Chicken Fricassee.  Some similar ingredients to this recipe, but a sauce with sour cream and egg yolk!  I was actually at half price books today thumbing through Julia Child’s hard core version in Mastering the Art of French Cooking…which made me even more grateful for the folks at ATK.  Super pumped to see how this Chicken Fricassee turns out!