Week 12: Cheeeeeeese - Spinach & cheese stuffed chicken breasts

Cheese isn't our favorite ingredient so while I wanted to make a cheese encased grilled cheese (a la The Sporkful - see video here), I knew neither of us really wanted to eat that much cheese so I found a recipe for stuffed chicken breasts in Cooks Illustrated (recreated here).  

As usual I took several liberties with the recipe the two big ones being I only used two chicken breasts, but I thinned them out by slicing them lengthwise, and then I also swapped the ham it calls for with spinach.  Below are the two chicken breasts I started with.

Here you can see I'd sliced them lengthwise then pounded them out so they were an even thickness.

I used cheddar and havarti cheeses because I had them and more cheese means more better.

I sauteed up some onions and garlic...

 ... and added them, along with the cheddar and havarti to come whipped cream cheese to make this: 

I put spinach down then a glob of the cheesy goodness on each chicken breast.

I rolled each one, dredged it first in flour, then in an egg wash, then finally in panko crumbs.  Sadly, there are no pictures of that part of the process because my hands were covered in chicken, but here is the final product of that process:

In two tablespoons of hot oil, I browned the outsides of them, turning every minute or two to get an even crisp.

Once browned, they went onto a foil-lined baking sheet and were baked till the internal temp registered 155 degrees. While they baked, I steamed up some brussel sprouts (obviously, right?  we eat them non-stop!).

And, here we have our final product!

They were fantastic.  They could have used a bit more salt and pepper, perhaps added to the panko for some external flavor, but needless to say, we managed to choke down this dinner in record time.