We will make this for under 15 dollars and try to save on some of the fat content that could be used, I have to assume you have a few basic staples in your kitchen if you do not it will raise the price a little bit. This is not because you need expensive things in your kitchen but because we need olive oil, onion and eggs for this that normally you should have in your kitchen. I tried to find items that where not on sale so that if you can find them on sale you will actually make this for less. This is an easy recipe that will feed 5 with a chance at seconds which is excellent.
Shopping List
- Chicken Breasts Boneless & Skinless (3 breasts which is normally one pack) approx: $4.59
- Bacon (just find the best price on this) approx: $2.49
- Neuchâtel Cheese (this is just like cream cheese and found with cream cheese just 1/3 the fat content) approx: 1.29
- Frozen Puff Pastry Sheets (need a box of 2 sheets) approx: $4.16
- Frozen Mixed Vegetables or the side of your choosing (e.g. can corn and green beans) approx: $1.79
- Optional if you have them in your house already or if you already have your sides get fresh thyme
Total Cost
- Without Side: $12.53
- With Side: $14.32
How is that for good shopping? Now I know that you found a lot of this on sale or found great coupons for each item so that you could save more money, use this money if you need to buy eggs, onion or olive oil. These are items you should never have in your kitchen.
Recipe Vitals
- Prep Time: About 15 Minutes
- Cook Time: 25 Minutes
- Total Time: 40 minutes
This can be prepped in advance and you can just come home from work and pop these in the oven.
Total Ingredient List (including items you should have)
- Chicken Breasts, cubed
- 6 Slices of Bacon
- 3/4 Cup of chopped or diced onion
- 6 ounces of Neuchâtel Cheese
- 2 Sheets of Frozen Puff Pastry, thawed
- 2 Eggs, beaten
- Pinch of Salt
- Pinch of Pepper
- Fresh Thyme (optional)
- 1 tbsp Olive Oil
Let’s Cook
Go ahead and start the oven up and preheat it to 400 degrees. We want that oven nice and hot when the pastry goes in so that we can get our puff on. Grab a large skillet and throw the bacon in and let it cook until its crisp. Once you have crisp bacon pull it out and drain it on some paper towels. Drain your skillet but do not rinse it out, we want to use whats left in the pan to do two things. Lubricate the chicken so it does not stick and we want to pull that marvelous bacon flavors off the pan.
Add your olive oil to the pan, drop in the chicken cubes and the onion. Cook this until the chicken is no longer pink, this should take about 7 to 8 minutes by this time the onions should be tender and almost transparent. Grab a slotted spoon and get the chicken out of the pan and into a good bowl you can mix up our filling in.
Crumble your bacon up over the bowl so that it all falls in go ahead and add your 6 ounces of Neuchâtel cheese into this bowl as well and mix well. Now if you have fresh herbs you can add them here the thyme will go great with the chicken so add a few sprigs (Make sure you are only adding the leafs and not the stem) and mix it up. Now if you do not have fresh herbs but you have dried herbs you can add some but add less so a dash will do the trick.
Carefully unfold your thawed pastry sheets and roll them out to make sure you have a 12″ square (thats in inches) and cut it into 4 equal pieces do that with both of your sheets, you should now have eight 6″ squares. Divide your chicken and bacon mixture up evenly over those eight pastries. Make sure you do not overfill as we need to be able to close these pastries up. Fold over the pastry and seal the edges with a fork, make sure they are sealed good we do not want any of that filling coming out.
Grab your cookie sheet and spray it with no stick cooking spray or throw some parchment paper on it (parchment paper is expensive so I recommend the cooking spray). Put your pastries on this sheet and put them in the oven for about 20 to 25 minutes. This depends on your oven so when they are a deep golden brown pull them out and get them off the cookie sheet, if you have wire racks cool them on your racks for about 5 minutes this will allow them not to become soggy on the bottom. If you do not have wire racks you can pull them out on a couple paper towels and let them cool for about 5 minutes before serving.
Cook up your side and enjoy dinner. (Ideally your side would already be ready as you would be working it while you had your pastries in the oven).
This will make an excellent dinner, if you have suggestions make sure you comment below and share your experiences.
