Chicken with Cider and Bacon Sauce

We very rarely eat a whole chicken breast in a meal.  I usually cut it up in chunks, or hide it in an enchilada or something equally as good.

Last week when meal planning, I felt like making a meal with an entire chicken breast.  My fear is that they will usually turn out dry (even if I use a temperature gauge on them), but this one turned out really good, plus it got good reviews from my husband.

Chicken with Cider and Bacon Sauce
adapted from MyRecipes
Ingredients
4 (6-ounce) skinless, boneless chicken breast halves  

1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon oregano
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper  
2 bacon slices, chopped
1/4 cup minced fresh onion
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
3/4 cup fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth

Directions

1. Place each chicken breast half between 2 sheets of heavy-duty plastic wrap; pound to 1/2-inch thickness using a meat mallet or rolling pin. Sprinkle chicken evenly with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and oregano.
2. Cook bacon in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat until crisp. Remove bacon from pan. Add chicken to drippings in pan; cook 6 minutes on each side or until done. Remove chicken from pan; keep warm.
3. Add onion to pan; cook 2 minutes or until tender, stirring constantly. Add cider and broth; bring to a boil, scraping pan to loosen browned bits. Cook until broth mixture is reduced to 1/2 cup (about 5 minutes). Stir in cooked bacon; serve sauce over chicken.

 
My husband loved this dish.  He loved the apple cider vinegar flavors in the sauce and how that played with the spices on the chicken.  The chicken was nice and moist and went really well with the rice.  This meal was gone within a day, and my husband usually doesn't eat a lot of leftovers.   I played around with the spices, because on myrecipes.com, a lot of complaints were that the chicken didn't have much flavor.  I also didn't read the recipe carefully enough and thought it called for apple cider vinegar instead of regular apple cider.  I think everything turned out great, but there is still a lot of room to play with the spice combinations.  I also wished that there would have been about an extra 1/4 cup of the sauce, it was good, but absorbed into the rice, so some bites you wanted more sauce on your chicken.


We served ours over Uncle Ben's Long Grain Rice.  This dish (without the rice) registers in at 269 calories per serving.