Gluten Free Bacon Wrapped Barbecue Chicken

This post today is brought to you by bacon. Yes, that’s right. Slices of juicy bacon wrapped around tender strips of chicken and brushed with mouth-watering barbecue sauce. Do I really need to tell you how delicious these are?

When my kids asked what was for dinner tonight, I told them chicken wrapped in bacon, and their eyes widened in disbelief as if I had just told them we were having ice cream for dinner. Yes, everyone loves bacon in my house. Sometimes I’ll even throw bacon into the veggies (here and here) to watch my kids lick their plates clean in seconds. You can never have enough bacon, am I right?

On a hunt to find the healthiest bacon to serve up for my family, I discovered Oscar Mayer Selects Smoked Uncured Bacon. Not only is it gluten free, but also it is free of all preservatives: nitrates and nitrites. I also like that it is easily available in my local supermarket. For those of you worried about cross contamination with gluten containing products manufactured on shared equipment, my family also loves Applegate.

This bacon wrapped chicken was partly inspired by the memory of warm summer evenings when my family ate dinner outside on the backyard patio, bathed in sunlight and feasting on fresh vegetables and chicken grilled on the barbecue. As much as I love the Christmas season, I very much miss those warm summer evenings. It snowed the day before Thanksgiving (unusually early for where I live in the Northeast), and since then the weather has progressively gotten colder and colder. Several nights ago, we lit a fire in the fireplace for the first time this winter. But this chicken seems to bring a taste of summer back to the table. It’s probably the barbecue sauce that I made sure to brush on oh so generously.

You have to be careful when cooking with barbecue sauce because not all sauces are gluten free friendly. Not to fear, though. I made sure to hunt down gluten free sauces for you all. Maybe one of these days I’ll be adventurous enough to try my hand at whipping up a homemade barbecue sauce too. In the meantime, I usually choose between Bone Suckin’ Sauce (I can’t get over that name) or Stubb’s Original Bar-B-Q Sauce. They are both free of high fructose corn syrup. I chose Stubb’s this time while making the bacon wrapped chicken: it’s a beautiful blend of vinegar, tomato & black pepper, and not as overpoweringly sweet as most brands. If you prefer a sweeter sauce, go with the Bone Suckin’ Sauce which is sweetened with honey.

One last tip. Because I wasn’t about to brave the ice-cold rain to get to my barbecue outside, I cooked these directly in my oven. I happened to have a metal shelf/rack from my convection Spacemaker oven that I placed over a pan lined with aluminum foil. You need to make sure to place a rack over a roasting pan in order to catch the drippings.

I probably don’t have to tell you that this chicken was an instant hit. And best of all, it only took ten minutes to prepare and then just thirty minutes in the oven. Not only is it a fantastic dish for dinner, but it would also make a very nice appetizer at a holiday party. Who could resist that bacon?

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Gluten Free Bacon Wrapped Barbecue Chicken

 

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Prep time

10 mins

Cook time

30 mins

Total time

40 mins

 

Serves: 5

Ingredients

• 2 lbs. boneless chicken breast, cut into thin strips
• salt
• Pepper
• garlic powder
• 1 lb. bacon
• 1 cup gluten free barbecue sauce

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 400℉
2. Season chicken with salt, pepper and then garlic.
3. Wrap each chicken strip in a slice of bacon.
4. Place wrapped chicken on a rack in a pan.
5. Brush the top of each strip with gf barbecue sauce
6. Bake for 15 minutes.
7. Turn over each strip with tongs, brush with barbecue sauce and bake for another 15 minutes.

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