Baked Crack Chicken

Cooking bacon is not fun. The grease pops scare me, and it makes the apartment super smokey. However. Bacon is SO good. Luckily, bacon is a food that you are allowed to eat while maintaining a Keto diet. This week, I found a recipe called Baked Crack Chicken. I was able to meal prep for six different meals, each with four-ounce servings of chicken. It tasted really good and if you like ranch, you’ll love this dish. It looks like there are a lot of steps, but it is actually pretty simple. Cooking the bacon is the hardest part.

Baked Crack Chicken:

                4 slices thick cut bacon, diced

  4 ounces shredded cheddar cheese

Chicken

                1 tablespoon vegetable oil

                1 tablespoon butter

                4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, pounded to ¼ inch thickness

                Salt and fresh ground pepper    

                ½ teaspoon garlic powder

                ½ teaspoon paprika

Ranch Cream Cheese

                4 ounces cream cheese, softened

                1 package of ranch seasoning

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400ᵒ F
2. Lightly grease a 9×13 baking dish with cooking spray and set aside
3. Use kitchen scissors to dice bacon into small chunks. Use a large skillet to cook bacon.
4. Remove bacon from skillet, but don’t get rid of the bacon grease.
5. Return skillet to heat with remaining grease and add the vegetable oil.
6. Pound chicken breasts to a ¼ inch thickness and season with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and paprika.
7. Add chicken breasts and cook for 2 to 3 minutes on each side
8. Remove chicken breasts from skillet and arrange in previously prepared baking dish.
9. In a small bowl, combine cream cheese and 1 tablespoon of ranch seasoning. Mix thoroughly and adjust according to taste.
10. Top each chicken breast with 2 tablespoons of the cream cheese mixture. Spread to coat the surface of each chicken breast.
11. Sprinkle each covered chicken breast with cheese and cooked bacon.
12. Bake, uncovered, for 15 minutes
13. Remove from oven and allow to cool.

This recipe came from https://diethood.com/baked-crack-chicken-breasts/. I simplified it just a little so that I wouldn’t have to make my own ranch seasoning.

My boyfriend and I both ate this meal three times over the week. I do suggest eating these meals before other meal prepped meals. They were delicious warmed up but after about the fourth day, it didn’t taste as good as it originally did. I paired this recipe with steamed broccoli again (I just like broccoli). I hope y’all give it a try!