Okay okay... so my first post was My Mom's Zucchini Bread and now I'm posting ANOTHER ZUCCHINI RECIPE. Two in a row. I'm sorry... but I'm not sorry. You know why? Because we have LOCAL zucchini available for purchase (Just head on over to our order page and if you purchase a minimum of $30 in produce, you get free delivery)! Oh, AND this is the first of the crop for the summer. So what better way to celebrate than by giving you my all time favorite zucchini recipe?!
I love this recipe because I've never had anything similar to it. It's unique. Mouth watering. Once cooked, it has a crispy skin, with delicious zucchini stuffing directly under it... which is cozied right next to the perfectly moist chicken breast. It's so good that you simply must try it! (And I'm sorry that the pictures just don't do this dish justice. I'm going to have to retake the next time I make it with better lighting!)
Please, trust me. It's DELICIOUS. So good that I forgot to get a picture of the finished product before we all gobbled it up. I promise I'll post more pictures when I make it again! I love to serve this with rice, and a salad.
Zucchini Stuffed Chicken
Ingredients
- 4 pieces of chicken, skin on
- 2 medium zucchini, (Shredded, not peeled)
- 3 T butter
- 3 slices of bread (cut into cubes)
- 1 egg (beaten)
- 2 ounces shredded swiss cheese
- 1/8 t. black pepper
- salt to taste
Instructions
- 1. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a glass baking dish.
- 2. Mix butter and zucchini in a saucepan until tender. Remove from heat.
- 3. Add in all remaining ingredients and stir well until incorporated and cheese has melted.
- 4. Stuff raw chicken (between the skin and the meat) with zucchini mixture. Place in prepared baking dish. If there's extra mixture leftover, place around the chicken pieces directly in the baking dish.
- 5. Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake an additional 30 minutes (depending on size of chicken).
- *If using the very large chicken breasts, it can take quite a bit longer to cook. Just double check it with a meat thermometer. Chicken should be 165 degrees when fully cooked.
Now, if you're looking for a recipe that is healthy (aka, uses applesauce in place of oil, a non sugar sweetener in place of real, granulated sugar, and some weird ground oat in place of flour), then you will probably want to look for a completely different recipe. Any recipe that uses 2 cups of sugar and 1 cup of oil is nowhere near healthy... but is it melt in your mouth amazing? Yes. Does it cover up the taste of vegetables and make it taste something like a sweet bread marrying a cake? Yes. Yes it does. And THAT is why I'm posting this recipe.
ANYWAY... days like this, where we'd play for hours and hours in the hay loft and pretending we were bandits hiding away, we would tend to get hungry after a few hours of playing and eventually find our way back to the kitchen.
My mom ALWAYS had a snack. And when I say snack, I don't mean Little Debbie snacks or fruit snacks. I mean she made something for us because she was amazing. Some days she would make us popcorn and cut up granny smith apples (always sprinkled with salt). Other days she'd cut up some cheese, summer sausage and crackers. And the best days were the days we would come home and be able to smell the zucchini bread before we even got in the door. Oh those were heavenly summer days.
This recipe is just as my mom made it 15-20 years ago. But if you'd prefer, there are a couple alterations you could make to help make it a bit more healthy. 1) You can replace the 1 cup of oil with all applesauce or a half cup applesauce and a half cup oil. 2) You can replace the sugar with... nothing. 3) Well, that's about it. If you have other healthy alterations, please feel free to comment but I will not guarantee that it will taste as delicious!
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