Saturday, November 19, 2022

Spinach Stuffed Chicken Breast



The creamy chicken breasts with spinach are tasty, special and original. Here is the recipe to prepare them. Spinach Stuffed Chicken Breast will change the way you eat chicken easy to make and so delicious!

Delicious chicken breasts are, in fact, made irresistible by a simple and delicious filling that will make your dish a real delight. Bechamel, cheese and spinach, in fact, will make this dish truly irresistible, perfect even for the most demanding. It will be a great idea to serve chicken in an original and particular way to your guests. Let's see, then, how to prepare excellent creamy chicken breasts with spinach and some useful tips for a perfect result.

Ingredients
4 chicken breasts
600 g spinach
200 g scamorza cheese
salt to taste
pepper to taste
extra virgin olive oil to taste

Ingredients for béchamel sauce
500 ml milk
70 g flour 
50 g butter
nutmeg to taste
Parmigiano Reggiano to taste

Preparation
To start the preparation of creamy chicken breasts with spinach you have to start from the base, or from the chicken breasts, which must be deprived of any parts of fat present on their surface. Once this is done, create side pockets and put aside momentarily while you dedicate yourself to the preparation of the béchamel sauce.

The béchamel sauce, originally called Sauce à la Béchamel, is a milk-based sauce native to France, but also widely used in other countries such as England and Italy. The invention is due to the Marquis of Nointel, Louis de Bechamel, who in the seventeenth century was the first to propose this recipe. The name "béchamel", on the other hand, was assigned to this sauce only by the cook of King Louis XIV, François Pierre de la Varenne, who introduced it in his recipe book "Le Cuisinier François". Some chefs, however, believe that in reality the béchamel sauce has Italian origins and that it derives from Tuscany, but that it arrived in France through Caterina de' Medici.

How to make béchamel sauce.
To start preparing the béchamel sauce you need to get a pot to hold 500 ml of milk. It is important that the milk is always very fresh and possibly whole, to give a more full-bodied flavor. You can also use semi-skimmed milk, but in this case your sauce will have a less intense flavor, albeit with less fat. Before even turning on the fire, add the sifted flour little by little and mix everything. This is a very delicate phase of the preparation of the béchamel sauce, since you have to pay attention to the formation of lumps, which would make your preparation unpleasant. Adding flour over low heat is important precisely for this reason, because if this operation were done on hot milk, the formation of lumps would be much more likely.

When the flour is well mixed and you have added it all, you can add the butter and put the pot on the fire. It is good to adjust the flame over medium heat, to prevent the milk from coming to a boil too soon. Continue stirring incessantly, to prevent the béchamel sauce from sticking to the bottom when it begins to thicken. At this point add nutmeg and a pinch of salt, adjusting with the quantities according to your taste and the use you intend to make of your sauce. In fact, depending on the dishes to which you are going to add it, you can decide to add a smaller or greater amount of salt and nutmeg. Continue stirring, until the density is as desired. At this point remove the pendulum from the heat and let it rest.

With these doses you will get a sauce with medium density but depending on the uses sometimes you need a higher density. For example, when you have to stuff dumplings or vol-au-vent, you need a thick sauce. To obtain it, however, it is not only necessary to prolong the cooking on the fire, but it will also be necessary to add butter and flour. This preparation is perfect to accompany baked meat, fish or boiled vegetable dishes, but is more commonly used in complex dishes such as lasagna or cannelloni. 

Put the milk and flour in a saucepan cold and stir to remove any lumps. Once this is done, add nutmeg, salt and butter and turn on the heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon so that the butter melts and the béchamel sauce does not stick to the bottom of the saucepan. Turn off the heat when your béchamel sauce has reached the right consistency and also add the grated cheese. Mix and set aside momentarily. Now dedicate yourself to scamorza, which will be reduced into chunks, and the spinach that must be boiled in plenty of salted water brought to a boil. If you use fresh flats, instead, just wash them and add them inside a non-stick pan with a drop of water. Cover with a lid and let go for a few minutes. In a short time, the spinach will soften. In both cases, once cooked, the spinach will be squeezed well so as to lose the excess liquid. In a bowl, mix together the spinach, béchamel sauce and the scamorza cheese. At this point everything is ready to move on to cooking your creamy spinach chicken breasts. Take the breasts prepared initially and stuff them with the newly created filling. If you wish, you can close the ends of the chicken breast with toothpicks so as not to spill the filling too much.

The stuffed chicken breasts should be passed in a non-stick pan greased with extra virgin olive oil. Let the cooking go, turning them several times, and add vegetable broth to facilitate cooking. Cover with a lid so as to have a perfect result even inside. If you wish, after a first quick cooking in the pan, you can transfer the breasts inside a baking pan and finish cooking in the oven. The result will still be excellent. Once ready, the creamy chicken breasts should be served to your guests when they are hot.

tip
You can use ricotta filling instead of béchamel.

 

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