Live Keto Cook Along: Bacon Wrapped Stuffed Chicken Breasts

Unfortunately, Instagram doesn't let you, um, do like a live stream with some of these services that allow you to stream to multiple places at once, so I kind of have to look at two cameras, but no big deal. So anyway, if you're just joining, we do a cook log every single Monday at 6 PM Eastern. If you can't cook along with me in person, you can always do it later, just watch the recording. Make sure you sign up at livecookalong.healnourishgrow.com. That way you get the ingredients ahead of time so that you can actually cook with me in real time. So anyway, tonight we are making stuffed chicken breasts. We're gonna stuff them with spinach, cream cheese, artichokes, sun-dried tomatoes. I don't know why I'm smacking this spatula, but that's what the plan is. So let's go ahead and get started. So first I'm going to— I got most of the things out. I forgot to grab the spinach, so let me just get that and we'll get started. I had to figure out where I put my spinach, and then I also realized I did not turn on my mic. Any sound at all on Facebook or YouTube, if somebody could message me in the comments and just say like, yes, I can hear you, or something like that, that would be great. And, um, I will do a better job next time. But in the meantime, let's get cooking. So I've got my pan over here on the stove. If you're on YouTube, you're up here Instagram, you can't see that as well, but I'll turn the camera so now you can see my pan. So you could do this in the microwave too, but I'm just going to do it all in the pan so it's one mess. And you know, there is this idea, like some people wonder if there is an issue with using the microwave, right? Because of, I don't know why, waves, some kind of waves that aren't supposed to be so good for us. Are on the microwave, so some people don't use them, and there could be a very good reason for that, but I'm— I've never delved into that. That's one subject, you know, I do a deep dive research on a lot of things, but that's not one that I have done up to this point. So I've got the spinach in my skillet so that can get unfrozen, and I need to turn on the oven so I So I'm going to preheat the oven to about 400 degrees. And this is probably going to be a relatively short live part of the cook-along tonight because really once it's in the oven, then it's just got to bake for a while and it would be really boring. I mean, I could sit here and talk to you the whole time, but also you could just wait for it to bake yourself. Anyway, if you're just joining live cook-along, it's been a little bit of technical difficulties at the beginning, but I've got the spinach cooking. This is 12 ounces of frozen spinach. I think the boxes are usually 10 ounces. It doesn't matter. It's close enough. Either one is fine. And then we've got our chicken breasts. Need to grab a knife because I neglected to do that before we started. So while the spinach is starting to defrost, we'll start getting the chicken breasts prepped and ready to go. So I typically am really careful about not using my cutting board, this particular cutting board. I try to just keep it for vegetables, but I am going to put down a little piece of paper towel right here, and that is gonna be fine to keep most of this off, and then I just will sanitize it later. So I tried to get— this is a pound and a half of chicken breast. The recipe is really for 2 people. You just multiply it if you have more, but chicken breasts nowadays are really pretty big, and so it's generally about a half pound per chicken breast, so that, that's plenty for 1 person. Just I'm just gonna check on this spinach real quick. So all we're looking to do, we're not trying to really, I mean, obviously this is already cooked and we're gonna stuff it into the chicken breast, but just trying to get it defrosted. Again, you could do that in the microwave. But now you wanna take your chicken breast. Okay, so again, this one's kind of weird. It had this piece of rib meat on it. This is pretty big. And you're gonna slice it in half lengthwise. So because my, hands now have chicken on them. Not going to touch my phone, but you're just trying to— I'm going to do it like this, but I'm not going to go all the way through so I can be focused. But you would do this and you butterfly it, so you're going to go through, cut it like that so that you can put the stuff inside of it. So you can see I cut that lengthwise, and now we have basically a pocket where we're going to put the stuffing. And then you just do that. Like I said, if you're making dinner for 2 people, you're just gonna use 2 large chicken breasts. And if you get a funky shaped one, you just gotta make it into a shape where you can, you know, stuff something inside of it. So if you got a real good shaped one, it's pretty easy. If you got a funky shaped one, it might be a little off, but No worries. So, okay, got the spinach. I'm going to wash my hands really quick, so I'm not going to be at the camera, but really, I'm very careful always about that stuff in the kitchen. I don't like having raw meat on my hands because of possible cross-contamination. So now that they're all washed again, feel free to put any health and wellness or keto-related questions in the box. And I will answer them as we cook along together. But the spinach is getting pretty close to being defrosted. Chicken is ready. I've got a new pack of bacon here because we are wrapping the chicken breast in bacon. And I think I called for in the recipe. I mean, you might— if you're— if your goal is weight loss, you might be wanting to limit the caloric value of this meal a little bit more. So if that's the case, you could just wrap your chicken breasts in 1 or 2 pieces of bacon. 1 would be like not even really, really enough, but I would say at least 2 pieces of bacon. But if you're not worried as much about your calories, you might do 3, you might do 4, whatever works for you. So just trying to get the spinach moving along so that once it comes time to put the rest of that stuff in there, we're ready to go. I'm going to go ahead and put artichoke hearts in there, and this is 7 ounces, I believe, is what I called for in the recipe because that's kind of the standard size of your Artichoke. I think you can get them in 7 or 15 size. And just trying to check to see. Yeah, these are in oil, so that's fine. I think you can use oil or you can use the ones that are packed in water. If you get ones that are packed in oil, Be a little mindful of if it's what kind of oil it is, because, you know, I've been talking about the different vegetable oils lately and avoiding polyunsaturated fats. So depending on what brand you get, they could be packed in olive oil, they could be packed in, they could be packed in one of the bad oils like soy or even sunflower. I really, you know, anything that's polyunsaturated fat based on the research I've done lately and what I've been reading, that's not something you're gonna want to be putting in your body on a regular basis. It really affects— so the mitochondria is your cell's way of producing energy, and polyunsaturated fats, there's some evidence that it can really mess with your cell's ability to effectively produce energy and release fat. So that's why I would choose to avoid those kinds of oils, and we get them Incidentally, plenty. We get them incidentally, you know, anytime you eat out. Every restaurant salad dressing, for the most part, has those kinds of oils in it. If you get anything that's fried, it's typically going to be fried in soy oil or fried in corn oil. I mean, that's pretty, pretty prevalent. I mean, you're rarely going to find a place that will fry stuff in lard. If you did, go there, that's good, you can do that. Well, when I say that, also fried food has other things along with it, right? Like typically carbs because of the breading and things like that. But if you can find one that does, you know, fry something, for example, if I found a place that fried potatoes in lard or in duck fat or something like that, I would typically go ahead and I might enjoy a couple of those fries. I'm not going to feel bad about it because you're still eating My thing is, right, if you're— even if you are going to still eat carbs, at least eat whole food carbs. Try to avoid the really processed, you know, things in a box, things that have way too many ingredients. It's in the name. I mean, try to avoid all that as much as possible. It's not always going to be 100% possible, but the more you can, the better. So, all right, I just about got the spinach, so I'm going to go ahead and add these artichokes in here. And then hopefully— I believe I put this on the recipe. It's funny because sometimes, especially on Cook Along Mondays, I haven't necessarily tested the exact recipe before, but obviously I've been cooking for long enough now that I can pretty much have a good gauge on what's going to be good together, what kind of recipe is going to be good. So I don't typically worry about it too much for the cook-alongs. When I'm writing recipes for the site, obviously I test them. I make them a couple of times, make sure that they work, all that good stuff. These ones for the cook-alongs, it's kind of like, this is how I cook on a day-to-day basis. I just go with what I know. I know that things are going to taste good together. I don't worry about the amounts too much. Of course, when I send out the recipe for the live cook-alongs, I do put the amounts, but typically on any given night in the kitchen. I don't really ever use a recipe. I'm just doing it because I've done it for so long now. I'm pretty much just doing my own thing. So, all right, got the sun-dried tomatoes. Those are going into the pan, and I'm just mixing these through, kind of get them all combined. Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and turn off the heat because the spinach is starting to stick to the bottom a little bit, and we're only going to need the residual heat to do the last thing. So the last thing is cream cheese, and I think again in the recipe I called for maybe 2 ounces. But you can definitely eyeball it, especially since cream cheese typically comes in an 8-ounce package. You're gonna have plenty. And if, you know, cheese agrees with you and you like cheese and you're not super worried about calories, then I would put in whatever amount of cheese makes you happy. So I'm gonna go with about, actually about 3 ounces here and see what that looks like. So you can see the pan here. It's got the artichokes, the sun-dried tomatoes, the spinach, and now I just added the cream cheese. So again, there's that residual heat from the pan, and I'm just going to let this get mixed together just until the cheese is melted enough that it spreads evenly throughout the dish. So that's looking pretty good now. A little bit more stirring and it'll be evenly mixed. So again, it's artichokes, spinach, sun-dried tomato. Oh, almost forgot, we do need to add a little seasoning for this, and I'm just using some garlic salt, and I think it called for about a teaspoon. In that. You can obviously do it to taste. So what you would do after you get this all mixed together is go ahead and give it a taste and see if it needs more salt or not. That's, you know, some people that might be watching this have cooked before, they always cook. A lot of people that come to keto, they haven't necessarily cooked a lot before because they might have just been eating like a lot of fast food and convenience food. And so when they come to keto, they're kind of like, I don't really know how to cook, or I don't know what to do. So that's part of the reason really for starting this live cook-along, so you can see. I mean, really, this recipe didn't even require any knife skills. I mean, it's just like mixing a few things together, sticking in some chicken, and we're gonna put it in the oven and like call it a day. It's done, right? So it can be really easy, and it doesn't need to, you know, be overcomplicated. This is actually fancier than what I would make on a typical night because it does have several ingredients. You are doing a little mixing, but still super easy. But, you know, a lot of nights it's just put a protein on a plate, put a veggie on a plate, and, you know, it's dinnertime. So anyway, let's give this a taste. Mm. I'm gonna say it needs a little bit more salt. And again, I'm using the garlic salt, so it has that extra flavoring in it. Okay, so now I'm going to show you this all mixed together so you can see the spinach artichokes. This is almost like a— you ever had spinach artichoke dip? This is pretty much it. If you put this on some pork rinds or something, you have a delicious dip that you can serve for an appetizer or really just for you know, anytime, snack, whatever you need. So, okay, we've got that done. Now there's gonna be some of that left, and I'm not too worried about that because I'll, you know, make that into an omelette tomorrow or something like that. No big deal, it's not going to go to waste. So I've got the chicken, I'm gonna bring this pan over here, and hopefully you can see that a little bit, but I'm just gonna take chicken breasts and put a nice amount in there. I'm not going to worry too much if it melts out because we'll still be able to eat that, but you could put a smaller amount. Now there's a few things with these wrapped chicken breasts, so again, I'm not trying to be super fancy. I understand that not everybody has cooking twine in their kitchen or wants to buy that specifically for a recipe, so there's a couple of things you can do otherwise to hold these together. So for example, you could, you could use toothpicks, you could use skewers. I actually got out my, some skewers that I have for when you grill and, you know, put the veggies on there or whatever. I'm not, I don't really mind that much if it spills out a little bit, so I'm not going to be too worried about it myself. But if you're being more fancy about this, then you might do it a different way. Okay, so now I've got the bacon and I'm going to just wrap this around. That's actually— one piece is actually covering about half. So I think two pieces per breast might actually be pretty good. So, but I don't think anybody ever gets mad about extra bacon, so So I got that all wrapped up now. Hope we can kind of see that. Let's go stick that back in the pan, and then you just do the next one. So this chicken breast was a little bit awkward shape, so it's folding a little bit different. But like I said, unless you're going for the beautiful pictures, like really trying to get the perfect picture, perfectly done, perfectly wrapped. I'm not going to worry too much about making it super beautiful because this is real life cooking right here. This is not like Instagram-worthy. And I mean, you can make it like that. That's what I'm saying. But just to like be at a cook-along trying to show you guys how to do this, I'm not going to be overly concerned about making it perfect. And again, just handling the raw chicken, giving myself a quick hand wash here. All right. So they are now really ready for the oven. And let me just give you a little closer view here. 2 wrapped up and ready to go chicken breasts. So this is going to go in the oven, uh, got it at 400°F. And basically, here's my deal with chicken: I don't like to risk it being underdone. So if you've been around my channel for a while, you know that I always use a meat thermometer. Meat thermometer is critical. Because it allows you to have perfectly done, not rubbery, not, you know, particularly chicken. You overcook chicken, it can get rubbery and kind of yucky. So it's my technical term, it's yucky. So if you do that, I would use the temperature probe because that way you don't overcook it. And it's particularly when you stuff a chicken, you've got kind of 2 separate things. So if you put it in the center, you're actually going to be putting it into the cheese, which doesn't help you because that's all— all the stuff inside is cooked. So when you take the temperature, you're going to try to slide it into just the half, you know, one half of the chicken breast that you've got cooking on your stuffed chicken breast and get an internal temperature. I still have to Google it every time, but I believe it's 160 degrees is what you want internal temperature of chicken to be. Nobody wants undercooked chicken, so that's really useful for that. I also always use a meat temperature probe for steaks because again, you don't want an overcooked steak, right? Particularly if you spend a good amount of money on getting a nice ribeye or something like that. The last thing you want is to have an overcooked steak. So do yourself a favor, get a meat thermometer. I have multiple ones. And some of these are linked on my Amazon page. So if you go to amazon.com/shops/healnourishgrow, you'll find my favorite kitchen tools, all that stuff on here. This is one of my meat thermometers. This is an instant read, so you just press the button. You can see it's got, you know, the temperature on there that's basically of the air right now. But you just take the end, you literally stick it into your meat, and that gives you the temperature. My other one is a different kind, and it has a separate unit that's got the temperature probe, and it's got a long cord. And so what you do is you stick the temperature probe into your meat, the cord comes out through your oven, it sits on the side. So whether you're using oven or the grill, you've got your temperature probe in the meat permanently, and you can set it to ring when it gets to the proper temperature. So for example, if you're cooking a medium-rare steak and you want your internal temperature to be 125 so that when you take it off and let it rest, it goes up to 135 and you get this nice medium rare steak. Then there's a separate piece of it also that, in addition to the probe and the box, there's a separate one you can actually carry around with you. They wirelessly or Bluetooth connect or something like that, but it will actually ring and tell you when it's finished and you go get your meat off and you call it a day. There's no more monitoring, there's no more like touching it and trying to see if it feels like this part of your hand, this part of your hand, this part of your hand. I was never any good at that. And also certain meats can, can lie, I've noticed. So when I get, I get a lot of grass-fed, grass-finished beef whenever I can. And what I've observed about that beef is that it's much more firm in a lot of cases. And so you'll feel the meat and it feels very firm, which would typically indicate that it's more well done, but it's actually still, you know, whatever temperature it is, more rare. So that's another reason to get that, to get the temperature probe is just like you'll just— it'll change your life with meat. You'll never have another overdone steak. It's so easy to use. It's just— I highly recommend it. So again, if you go to amazon.com/shop/healnourishgrow, you can find all my favorite kitchen tools. And yeah, so that's it. The chicken's in the oven. It's probably going to take anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes. You can see how quick the prep was. This is a great weeknight meal done in under 30. You just spend the maybe 10 minutes that I spent getting it all together and get it in the oven. And then all you have to do is wait for that little thing to ring. If you had that in there, you would know when it's done and then you're ready to go. So anyway, if you want to join me again in the future for the live cook-along, be sure to go sign up at livecookalong.healnourishgrow.com. Hopefully I'll have less technical difficulties next time. The Instagram always works because I just have that on my phone and that's super easy. But when I try to livestream to the other channels at the same time, that's where I have a challenge because it's like it's a different camera, it's a different program, it's a different microphone, all those things. So getting them all right together is going to maybe take a little bit more practice. But hopefully I will do better next time. As always, if you're seeing this later and you have any questions about any of the things I said, all— everything related to health and wellness, everything related to yoga, everything related to keto is what I do. It's what I'm passionate about. It's what I help people with every day. So if you have any questions, get in touch and I will see you next Monday. Yes, I'm still in town next Monday. So we've got one more recipe until I'm taking a week off because I'm I'm thinking I'm going to be out of town snowboarding again, so that'll be really fun. But anyway, sign up for the next time. I would love to have you guys cook along with me. Take care.