Thursday, March 31, 2011

Clean Eating Spinach and Feta Stuffed Chicken Breasts (OAMC)

Makes 6 Servings
These are super easy but they look gourmet when they are done. I love, love, LOVE that you cook them from frozen becaues you know I'm incapable of remembering to thaw things the night before. When there is a really good sale on chicken, I've been known to make 30 stuffed chicken breasts at once. It takes next to no time to assemble them and they've really become one of my go-to throw together meals. I usually have them with some Perfect Brown Rice and steamed veggies and I drizzle the rice with the juices from the baking dish. Yum!!

Ingredients:
  • 6 boneless skinless chicken breasts
  • Salt and pepper
  • 3 oz reduced-fat cream cheese
  • ½ cup feta cheese
  • 2 cups baby spinach leaves
ONE: Season chicken breasts with salt and pepper. In a small bowl, mix together the cream cheese and feta with a fork.

TWO: Make a slit in the side of the chicken breast to create a pocket. Fill the chicken breast with the cheese mixture and spinach. (My sister, Anthea, uses scissors to snip the spinach into tiny pieces and then mixes it in with the cheese before stuffing.)

THREE: Wrap individually in tin foil and freeze. Store frozen breasts in a freezer bag.

TO COOK: Preheat oven to 350. Unwrap frozen chicken breasts and place them in a baking dish coated with non-stick cooking spray. Bake, covered with foil, for one hour or until tender and no longer pink in the center (45-50 minutes if defrosted).

NUTRITION INFO:

Per Serving -  89 Calories (46 Calories from Fat), 5g Total Fat, 3g Saturated Fat, 32mg Cholesterol, 229 mg Sodium, 2g Total Carbohydrates, 0g Dietary Fiber, 1g Sugars, 9g Protein, 21% Vitamin A, 5% Vitamin C, 9% Calcium, 3% Iron

Spinach on Foodista

:)

7 comments:

  1. I followed you from the foodie blog roll and I'd love to guide Foodista readers to your site. I hope you could add this spinach widget at the end of this post so we could add you in our list of food bloggers who blogged about recipes with spinach,Thanks!

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  2. Thanks for the tip, Alisa. I've added the widget to this post plus a few others with spinach :) Actually, we put spinach in a TON of things so maybe more than a few, LOL.

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  3. Got a great deal on chicken a couple days ago so I'm gonna make about twelve of them right now:)Can't wait to try them but i'm pretty sure they will be absolutely delicious because everything on this blog is!!!!!

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  4. Ok I just made ten of these and i'm an idiot and forgot to cook them with foil over the dish....they still taste absolutely amazing but obviously i dried them out.....what can i do to moisten them up a little when i reheat them at a later time?....would putting a little pasta sauce on top do the trick?....I bet it would taste great with a little pasta sauce. I also cut up all my spinach into tiny pieces with kitchen scissors and mixed it right into the mixture...it seemed less time consuming if i could just shove the mixture in with out having to fit whole pieces of spinach. I had a little trouble making big pockets in the chx....any tips?....I probably need a better knife I think:)

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  5. Anthea,
    I LOVE the idea of chopping the spinach and mixing it in with the cheese. I'm totally going to do it that way from now on. I would agree with the pasta sauce idea or you can reheat them in a covered dish and put a little splash of chicken broth in with them. That way they'll almost steam a little in the broth. Then pour the broth over them before serving. Hope that helps.

    There's no way you need a better knife because you have Cutco but it might be time to send them back to be sharpened. You should be using the trimmer which is the pointy one with the blade that's about 4 inches long. Place the chicken on the cutting board and hold it down with the palm of your hand on top of it. Start in the thickest part of the chicken and make a small pocket. Then slowly expand the pocket in all directions using small sawing motions. The chicken on the top and bottom doesn't need to be very thick so the pocket can extend even to the thinner parts.

    Good Luck!
    ~Bri

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  6. Ok I had one for dinner last night....mmmm yum!!!!!...and my technique of freezing them right in the bag in a row and sucking the air out with a straw worked amazing....none of them were touching and i didn't have to lay them all out on a flat surface and freeze them and then transfer them into the bags....they were already separated and frozen nice and flat in a freezer bag already:)....seeing as i cooked my entire spring break and can now feed the family for two months off of what is in the freezer....i didn't have any room for a cookie sheet to do the flash freeze method so laying them flat in a smaller freezer bag and then layering the smaller bags in a gallon freezer bag with all the air removed with a straw worked wonders:)....its like freezer food space saver bags hahahahahaha

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  7. Just made these for the first time! I threw my spinach in the food processor and pulsed until it was nicely minced. Then I tossed in the cheeses and pulsed until everything was combined. It pretty much became a spinach-feta cheese spread, which I think would also work nicely with crackers or vegetables, but I digress... :) It was very easy to stuff the breasts with the mixture. I wrapped my chicken breasts individually in Press-n-Seal to freeze because I didn't have enough foil. Seems to work well! Looking forward to cooking them in the future.

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