Jalapeno Popper Chicken Rollatini

I saw this recipe initially on Prevention RD.  I thought it sounded interesting, but making pockets in chicken breasts and stuffing them has never been a strong suit of mine, everything always ends in disaster.

I found Chicken Rollatini with Prosciutto and Cheese on the Skinnytaste blog and thought that making a rollatini out of the chicken would be easier than trying to make pockets in the chicken breasts.

I have never used Panko either, so I thought this would be a fun recipe to try, especially since Prevention RD mentioned that Panko gives things the feeling of being fried without actually having to fry the food. 

Jalapeno Popper Chicken
adapted from Prevention RD and A Taste of Homecooking
Ingredients
2 chicken breasts
4 oz reduced-fat cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup part-skim shredded Cheddar or Colby cheese
1 teaspoon olive oil
2 jalapenos, chopped (ribs and seeds removed)
1/2 cup bread crumbs
3/4 cup Panko
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon dried cilantro
1 egg
Directions
1) Pound chicken breasts until about a 1/4 inch thick.  Then cut each chicken breast in half lengthwise, so you have four chicken strips.
2) Preheat oven to 350 F and lightly grease a baking dish with nonstick cooking spray.
3) Heat oil in a small skillet over medium-high heat. Add jalapenos and cook until softened, about 5 minutes.
4) Mix together cream cheese, shredded cheese, and jalapeno peppers.
5) Mix together bread crumbs, Panko and seasonings on a plate. Whisk egg in a separate bowl.
6) Dip chicken into egg and then into bread crumbs. Repeat with all chicken breasts and place on a baking sheet.
7) Spoon jalapeno mixture onto chicken strips and then roll each piece of chicken into a rollatini.
Bake for 30 minutes. Serve.

I wanted to try out a raspberry sauce, because I love the jalapeno poppers from Arby's.  The more I researched sauces though, the more I thought they sounded too complicated, so I tried something simple. 

For raspberry sauce, put two tablespoons of raspberry jam into a sauce pan on medium heat, and keep it on the heat until the sauce is the desired consistency (about 5 minutes).  If you leave the sauce alone too long, it solidifies into jam again.

My husband didn't want to try the raspberry jam, so he put ranch on his. 

This recipe turned out incredible.  The rollatinis are crunchy from the Panko and have a great outside texture.  The jalapenos are soft from letting them saute in the pan for a few minutes, but they work great inside the cream cheese to add a slight crunch and a bit of heat.  It is seriously everything you love about the bite sized appetizers rolled up in a chicken strip.  I loved the raspberry jam too.  I think it gave it a slight sweetness and the raspberry flavor went great with the filling inside the chicken.  The ranch version was good too, but as you can see from the picture above, my husband kind of drowned his rollatini in ranch, so with the ranch version, you lost a lot of the good base "popper" flavor.  Definitely a keeper!