I love having a simple recipe that doesn’t take much time to put together, but is nice enough to serve when company’s coming. This is one of those foods I thought I would have to give up when I started a ketogenic diet, but I’m finding that it’s not hard to find replacements for most of the things I miss. This chicken is flavorful, moist, and tender.

makes 4 servings

The Preparation

12 ounces boneless, skinless chicken breast
2 ounces deli-sliced black forest ham
2 ounces blue cheese
8 ounces bacon
toothpicks

The Execution

1. Start by trimming up the breast meat. I separate the 2 halves and trim off excess meat.

2. Carefully slice each breast portion in half lengthwise, like so:

3. After you get it started, lay it open as you finish cutting it in half. Be careful to leave both halves intact. You don’t want to cut all the way through; just enough to lay it open flat.

4. They should look like this when you are finished.

5. Get all of your ingredients ready. This way you don’t have to worry about cross contamination.

6. Lay a piece of ham on the chicken breast and put cheese in the middle. Here I am using some horseradish Havarti for my spouse, who doesn’t care for bleu cheese.

7. This is what you have so far: cheese on ham on chicken.

8. Fold ham over cheese, like this:

9. Then fold other side of ham over.

10 .Carefully fold chicken in two, covering ham. Take a piece of bacon and gently stretch it by pulling on both ends. Beginning at one end, begin to wrap chicken.

11. Continue to wrap chicken to opposite end.

12. Once you have wrapped around the chicken, take second piece of bacon and wrap end to end. Secure with toothpicks as needed.

13. Place wrapped chicken in an oven proof skillet (I like using cast iron) that has been greased with butter, coconut oil, or bacon grease.

14. Preheat oven to 325°F. In skillet over medium heat, brown bacon on all 4 sides.

15. Remove pan from stove top and place in oven. Cook for 45 minutes or until chicken is done. Let sit for 10 minutes, then serve and enjoy!

Recipe Notes

Carb counts are based on the bleu cheese.

Some alternate ideas are:

Use cream cheese instead of bleu cheese
Use pepperoni instead of ham

This makes a total of 4 servings of Bacon Wrapped Chicken Cordon Bleu. Each serving comes out to be 466 calories, 33.2g fats, 1g net carbs, and 38.6g protein.

NUTRITION	CALORIES	FAT	CARBS	FIBER	NET CARBS	PROTEIN
12 ounce boneless, skinless chicken breast	561	12.3	0	0	0	105.5
2 ounce deli-sliced black forest ham	63	2.1	1.1	0	1.1	10.5
2 ounce blue cheese	200	16.3	1.3	0	1.3	12.1
8 ounce bacon	1209	105.9	0	0	0	60.5
— toothpicks	0	0	0	0	0	0
Totals	2033	136.5	2.4	0	2.4	188.6
Per Serving (/4)	508	34.1	0.6	0	0.6	47.1