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Bacon swiss cheese chicken is so easy to make and delicious too. It’s sure to become a family favorite.
Yummy Flavors
Great ingredients are the secret to this chicken’s fabulous flavor.
The swiss cheese adds a nuttiness to this meal. And what can I say about bacon? Well, an awful lot! You don’t need much bacon to impart it’s fine flavor. In fact, this recipe only uses three slices.
These ingredients work so well with chicken. Since chicken breast is rather bland, you need to use great seasonings or additional highly-flavored ingredients to showcase it.
Browning Is Another Key
I always considered browning to be one of the key factors that flavor a dish. It’s often overlooked, and with food that’s on the bland side, it’s pretty necessary for flavor.
In this recipe, the chicken is browned in some bacon drippings. The drippings also add a lot of flavor.
The onion and mushrooms are browned in the drippings as well. You don’t need much bacon drippings–a little goes a long way.
Deglaze That Pan
Deglazing a pan serves two purposes.
Scraping up all those lovely browned bits that are in the pan and incorporating them into any liquid used in the recipe adds tons of flavor.
Deglazing also cleans the skillet of anything that stuck in the pan. This is a boon especially if you are using pans that don’t have a non-stick coating. That’s the secret to cleaning a stainless steel skillet. Even if you are not making a sauce, deglazing the pan with about 1/2 cup of hot water while the pan is still on direct heat makes clean up a breeze.
Getting Saucy
This sauce is creamy and full of great flavor.
As I said above, deglazing the pan with the stock adds a lot of flavor. It’s important to use a very good tasting stock. One of my favorites is College Inn Bold. Better Than Bouillon is another good one. If you want a low-sodium variety, then Kitchen Accomplice is a good stock to choose. It’s a concentrate and I find it has superb flavor, which is not the case most times with low-sodium products.
The sauce also gets great taste from reducing it. With this sauce, I reduced it about 25 per cent but I still wanted it thicker, so I used a bit of flour and water, but if you like a thinner sauce, then it’s not necessary to thicken.
Since you get a bit of sauce in this recipe, this chicken is wonderful served over pasta.
The Recipe
Bacon Swiss Cheese Chicken
Ingredients
- 4 medium boneless skinless chicken breast halves
- 3 slices bacon
- 4 slices swiss cheese
- 2 tbsp chopped onion
- 8 oz sliced -OR- button mushrooms fresh preferred
- 1 1/4 cups chicken stock/broth
- 1/2 cup cream
- Salt to taste
- Pepper to taste
THICKENING
- 2 tbsp flour
- 1/4 cup water
Instructions
- In a large skillet, cook bacon until crisp. Remove bacon from pan and place on a paper towel. Do not discard the bacon drippings. You should have about 2 tbs in the pan from the cooked bacon.
- Brown chicken well on both sides over medium heat in the same pan in which you cooked the bacon. Remove from pan and set aside.
- In the same pan, brown the onions and mushrooms (if you use canned, drain first).
- Deglaze the pan with the chicken stock.
- Add the chicken back to the pan, cover and reduce heat. Cook for 15-20 minutes or until chicken is cooked through.
- Remove the chicken from the pan and keep warm while making the sauce.
- Add the cream and increase the heat to medium and reduce liquid 25%--this should take about 5-8 minutes. If you want a thicker sauce, mix the flour and water and add to the pan, stirring until liquid is thickened. Add any salt and pepper at this point.
- Place the chicken back in the pan and place a slice of swiss cheese over each piece of chicken.
- Fold the cheese slices if they are too long.
- Cover and cook over low heat until cheese melts--about 5 minutes.
- Crumble bacon over each chicken breast.
Nutrition
Miranda says
I love how gooey the cheese looks on top! Yummy!
Miranda recently posted…Strawberry Lemonade
Judith Hanneman says
That’s the best part Miranda!!!