I was in a restaurant recently and spotted ‘Hunter’s Chicken’ on the menu, described as chicken breast wrapped in bacon, cooked in BBQ flavoured tomato sauce and topped with cheese.
Since it incorporates nearly all my oldest daughter’s favourite ingredients I thought we should give it a try. Finding a recipe proved difficult so I did what I normally do and just made it up as I went along.
Ingredients
- 4 chicken breasts
- 8 thinly cut rashers of bacon
- Grated cheddar
Sauce
- 500g passata
- 1 spoonful of honey
- Several squirts of Heinz Barbeque sauce
- Generous splash of Worcester Sauce
- Pinch of oregano and tarragon
- Black pepper
Oven 200 (180 Fan)
Sourcing ingredients
I get my chicken from our village butcher and usually two chicken breasts chopped up feeds all four of us. That wasn’t going to work as I needed four individual portions so I cut the flappy bit off the bottom and used those bits for pasta. I slit the remaining breasts down the middle but not all the way through and put them in my dish.
In a jug I mixed the passata with everything else and kept adding more until it tasted nice. It was runnier than I really wanted but I carried on anyway. I spooned the sauce into the slits and then wrapped the bacon around each breast. It was a bit messy but I managed. There was a lot sauce left so I put a bit more on top. Then I put it in the oven for 20 minutes.
I gave them a bit of a poke and the chicken seemed to be cooked so I sprinkled cheese over the top and put it back in for five minutes until it was melted.
I put the chicken on the plate and I was left with a lot of very runny sauce in the dish. So I poured it into a pan, added some cornflour mixed with water and boiled it up. Unfortunately it ended up too thick but it tasted nice so we had some on the side.
Verdict
It tasted great. Next time I will have to do something about the consistency of the sauce though. I think it needs to be cooked in the extra sauce or it would be too dry but the sauce was far too runny. Not sure if it was worth slitting the chicken and putting sauce on before wrapping the bacon around as it was very fiddly and messy. I will probably try making it without that step and see how much difference it makes to the taste. Went down well with the whole family though so will definitely have another go.