Bacon-wrapped chicken parcels stuffed with cheese and spring onion

A chicken breast, minus its bones and even skin, doesn’t have a lot to offer a hungry human in its own right. It needs a little help in order to become a much more filling meal.

Let’s bring in the reinforcements:

1. Cheese. Let’s grate some ordinary old Cheddar cheese and mix something else into it, as well as some reasoning and a herb, and fashion a pocket in the breast in which it can be stuffed.
2. Spring onions. Let’s dice 2 or 3 spring onions and mix them into the cheese.
3. Bacon. Of course. But this won’t go inside. Two rashers will be wrapped around each breast fillet before they go into a hot oven to cook while you also knock up some crispy, golden potato chips.

And there’s a fine and much more substantial supper than a mere scrawny chicken breast fillet.

Tony’s cheese-stuffed, bacon-wrapped chicken parcels

Ingredients

4 chicken breast fillets

4 spring onions, diced

1 Tbsp picked fresh thyme leaves

8 rashers of back bacon

1 cup grated Cheddar cheese

Salt

Black pepper

½ tsp cayenne pepper

Cooking oil spray (I used Butro spray)

A thyme sprig for garnish

Method

Using a small, sharp knife (such as a paring knife), cut a pocket in each chicken breast, from the thickest edge, without cutting all the way through the breast fillet.

Grate the cheese and add it to a bowl. Add the diced spring onions, cayenne pepper, thyme, salt and black pepper to taste.

Spoon this into each of the four pockets of the chicken breasts. Press the open ends together with your fingers.

Season the outsides of the four breasts with salt and black pepper.

Wrap two back bacon rashers around each of the four chicken breasts. Tuck them underneath neatly.

Preheat an oven to 200°C or an air fryer oven to 190°C.

Spray an oven pan or air fryer rack, place the chicken parcels on it, and cook for 20 to 30 minutes or until the bacon is crisp and the chicken juices run clear when a skewer is inserted. Garnish with a sprig of thyme.

Serve with crisp and golden potato chips. DM

Tony Jackman is twice winner of the Galliova Food Writer of the Year award.

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.