Chicken Roulade Recipe

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Prep your mushrooms by swiping them clean with a paper towel. Cut each mushroom into 1/2" slices, then cut each slice into 4 pieces.
2. In a saucepan over medium heat, heat the olive oil and melted your butter. Add the minced garlic and sauté for 30 seconds. Add the mushrooms and cook until they are soft and tender. Once the mushrooms are tender, add in the spinach and cook for a minute or two, just until wilted. Remove the mixture from the heat and pour into a clean, large bowl.
3. Now, take a chicken breast and place the smooth plumper side face down. Use a sharp knife to cut through the chicken along the side, cutting horizontally, just until you've almost split the chicken breast in half. You want to stop right before you completely separate the halves, leaving them hanging on to each other by one edge. This technique is called butterflying, and you can ask your butcher to do this if you are too nervous to try it yourself. Repeat this step for the other 3 chicken breasts.
4. Take each butterflied chicken breast and use a meat mallet to pound out the chicken and flatten it out a bit. Temporarily set aside.
5. Back to the mushroom filling: add the ricotta cheese, grated parmesan, nutmeg, and 1/2 a teaspoon of salt and a pinch of freshly ground pepper. Give everything a good mix until the ingredients are blended well and the ricotta has been incorporated nicely.
6. Place a flattened and butterflied chicken breast onto your work surface, then sprinkle a small pinch of salt all over the breast. Scoop 2 heaping spoonfuls of the mushroom mixture onto the center. Now, grab one side of the chicken breast and begin rolling it over the filling like you would a burrito. Once it's rolled with the seam-side facing down, take a strip of bacon and begin wrapping half of the chicken breast. Take another strip of bacon and, where the first strip ended, begin wrapping the remaining half of the chicken breast. Repeat this step for the remaining 3 chicken breasts.
7. Line a baking sheet with a sheet of foil. Place an oven-safe, wire rack over the sheet. Transfer the rolled and stuffed chicken breasts to the wire rack and place in the oven to bake for 40 minutes. At that point, the chicken juices should run when clear when you poke into the chicken with a knife. The bacon should be mostly crisp.
8. Depending on how thin or thick your bacon strips are, you may need a few minutes to help crisp up your bacon further. If so, you can switch the oven's bake setting to broil and raise the heat to 450°F. Broil the chicken for 1-2 minutes, then rotate the pan and broil for another minute or two. Be sure to watch your chicken the ENTIRE time that you are broiling as the bacon can go from crispy to burnt within the blink of an eye!
9. Take the chicken out of the oven and let it rest on the pan for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, transfer to a cutting board and use a very sharp knife to make 1" sliced medallions. Arrange the medallions on a large serving plate, overlapping them slightly.