Bacon-Wrapped Chicken Breasts

Wrapped in bacon with a brown sugar rub, these Bacon-Wrapped Chicken Breasts are a sweet and savory dish perfect for any night of the week.

Ingredients

For the bacon-wrapped chicken, the only important ingredients are the chicken and the bacon. If you just use those two things, it will be tasty. I have more to say about the bacon below.

For the chicken, the recipe calls for boneless skinless chicken breasts, but you can also use boneless skinless chicken thighs. If the thighs are already in bundles (each one bundled around where the bone would have been), then keep them that way and wrap the bacon slices around. If they’re instead flat, then fold two ends under to make bundles, and then wrap them. If you leave them flat and then wrap them in bacon, they will cook through and start to dry out before the bacon cooks. The recipe for thighs is then the same as given below for chicken breasts below.

The chicken breasts used in this recipe are 6-7 ounces each. If yours are much bigger than that, you’ll want to cut them in half, or plan to increase the cooking time. I like to cut them on the diagonal (see more about cutting large chicken breasts to cook them better and more evenly here).

There is a seasoning rub made in the recipe that includes brown sugar, garlic powder, paprika, salt, and pepper. It’s optional though. There’s tons of flavor in the bacon itself and that transfers to the chicken, making it tasty even if you don’t do anything else.

If you decide to make the spice rub, consider trying it with smoked paprika instead of the regular sweet kind. It adds a smoky flavor that goes so well with bacon.

Type Of Bacon To Use

The recipe below calls for thin-sliced bacon. If you use that, the bacon has the best chance of getting crisped in the time it takes the chicken breasts to cook.

You can also use regular-sliced bacon. It will be fully-cooked and safe to eat by the time the chicken is cooked, but it will not be very crispy. The solution is to turn on the broiler for just a couple of minutes at the end of cooking. Then, the bacon on the top will crisp up really nicely.

Don’t use thick-cut bacon here. It doesn’t wrap well around the chicken breasts, but, more importantly, it doesn’t manage to get a crispy texture, even with some broiling. It also renders a lot of fat so that your chicken breasts are sitting in grease as they cook, which I don’t really like.

How To Wrap Chicken In Bacon

You’ll use two slices of bacon per chicken breast. You can get away with one slice per breast, but it’s better with two.

I start by placing the end of a slice of bacon under one of the ends of the chicken breast and start wrapping. When that slice has covered the chicken breast, I place the end of another slice on top of the end of the wrapped piece and kind of smoosh them there so they hold together. Then wrap the second slice around.

A lot of recipes have you secure the bacon with a toothpick, but it has never been necessary for me. The bacon kind of sticks to the chicken on its own. As the bacon cooks and renders fat, it contracts and holds itself in place even better on the chicken.

Time and Temperature

The oven temperature for this recipe is 425F, which is a tad higher than I normally bake chicken breasts at (400F). This higher temperature is to help that bacon crisp up. The bacon-wrapped chicken will be cooking for about 20 minutes total.

Now, what can happen here is that the chicken overcooks at that high temperature. So, after 15 minutes, especially if your chicken breasts are on the smaller side, you’ll want to test the temperature of the middle with an instant-read thermometer. Or, you can cook the chicken breasts with an oven-safe thermometer probe in one of them.

Once the chicken reaches 155F, you’ll have a decision to make. If the bacon looks like it’s going to be the crispness that you want, leave the chicken in the oven until it gets to 165F and then take it out. If, on the other hand, the bacon doesn’t seem as crispy as you’d like it, then you’re going to turn the broiler on over top of the chicken. You’ll cook it under the broiler until the bacon is crispy and the internal temperature of the chicken breast is 165F. It will only take a couple of minutes so watch it carefully.