Bacon Wrapped Jalapeño Chicken Bombs – Taste

Start by heating your oven to 350 degrees and then get to chopping. You can experiment with different fillings or just get crazy like me and throw everything in there. If you like hot spicy heat – leave in the jalapeno seeds! For spice challenged wimps you can always swap out the jalapenos with spinach leaves/mushrooms or red peppers... But whatever you decide for your filling the procedure is the same:

Cover the chicken in plastic wrap, place on a strong surface or cutting board and use a meat mallet to pound them out. Pound out the chicken breasts until they are quite thin so that they are easy to roll up.

Next, place a long thin chunk of cream cheese in the center of the chicken breast. Add your fillings - jalapeno, green onions, cheddar cheese on top, and then wrap the chicken around it. I like adding roasted red peppers in there as well. The trick is to make sure that the cream cheese doesn’t melt out of the chicken breast. There are two tips to prevent this. The first tip is to use a big solid chunk of cream cheese – don’t use whipped cream cheese, it will melt too much, and ooze out of the chicken. Secondly, you need to carefully wrap up the chicken tight making sure that the chicken is completely wrapped around all the filling -The bacon is key to holding everything together tight. If you are worried you can add a couple of toothpicks in for added measure but the bacon usually holds it all together without them.

Use 2 slices of bacon to wrap around each chicken breast sealing it shut. Salt and pepper to taste. I like adding some garlic power on them as well.

Place the bacon wrapped chicken breasts in the oven, after 45 minutes, remove the chicken from the oven, and drain any bacon fat off the pan/dish.

Increase the oven temperature to 400 degrees, letting the bacon crisp up for another 10 minutes or as long as necessary. You can try brushing on some of your favorite barbecue sauce over the bacon at the end as well. Enjoy!