Roasted Red Pepper & Feta Stuffed Chicken

Just writing the title of this dish makes me want to eat it. A few months ago Steve and I tried our hand at a stuffed chicken breast dish - and it didn't go quite as well as we had hoped (we couldn't seem to get the chicken to look presentable once it was all stuffed). However, we thought that we shouldn't give up on stuffed chicken recipes and decided to give it another try.

We had read a few recipes and had developed a few thoughts on what we wanted to include in our recipe - we decided to make roasted red peppers, use feta cheese, and mix it all together with a healthy dose of balsamic vinaigrette.

Here are all of the ingredients that we used:

• 2 chicken breasts
• 2 red peppers
• 1.5 cups of feta cheese
• 1/2 cup of balsamic vinaigrette
• 1 tablespoon dried basil
• 3 tablespoons of olive oil
• Pepper to taste
• 10 toothpicks
• Cooking spray

And here is how we brought it all together:

1. Cover a baking pan with tin foil and then grease the foiled pan with cooking spray; use cooking spray to cover all sides of each red pepper; place red peppers on the baking sheet in the oven on broil - leave in oven until the red peppers have blackened
2. Remove blackened red peppers from the oven; place in a metal bowl and cover bowl tightly with saran wrap. Let sit for approximately 10 minutes
3. Remove the cooled blackened red peppers from the metal bowl and begin to remove their skin; discard red pepper skin and remove the seeds from the inside of the peppers; cut the red peppers into small cubes and place into a bowl (this bowl will be used to mix all of your 'stuffing')
4. Add feta cheese (break apart with fork), balsamic vinaigrette and basil to the red peppers (in the bowl mentioned above; mix the ingredients together (add pepper to taste if preferred)
5. Place each chicken breast on a surface that is well lined with either waxed paper or saran wrap; then cover the chicken with the wrap that you used on the surface
6. Use a blunt object (meat tenderizer, rolling pin, or if you are me - a can of green beans) and tenderize each chicken breast until it is the perfect thickness to still allow to keep its form, but thin enough to allow for lots of stuffing to be added
7. Add the stuffing mix to each flattened chicken breast - filling so that the breast will be full but not overstuffed - you need to remember that these need to close; begin pulling the sides of the chicken breast together and closing with toothpicks (take your time with this step - it may take a few tries to get your breast to close). You can also leave some of the mixture out and place it over top of the stuffed chicken breasts when they are finished cooking
8. Place each stuffed chicken breast in a baking dish and brush olive oil over each one; place in oven and cook for 375F for 25 minutes
9. Remove cooked stuffed chicken breasts from the oven (check to ensure they are done) and enjoy!

This recipe was excellent - and we didn't follow a set recipe (this was a rare occasion). We really enjoyed roasting the red peppers (despite us setting off our smoke detector several times) and we were so pleased with how the chicken looked at the end and tasted. We are definitely going to make this recipe again and will soon start to look at what other combinations we can use to stuff our chicken with. This recipe is one we both loved and highly recommend!

Bon appetit & enjoy!