Bruschetta Chicken Bake

This isn't some complicated fru-fru dish that you'll just use once in a blue moon. It also doesn't taste all that much like bruschetta, but it is hearty and fairly good tasting. Most of all, it's so easy you could do it every day and not mind one little bit.

The recipe comes from the back of Kraft Stove Top Stuffing Mix boxes or the Kraft web site, if you prefer.


The ingredients of this dish are all easy to work with, inexpensive, and readily available. Great, huh? Oddly enough, the Kraft mix was less expensive at Wal-mart than their store brand. I rarely ever see that.

1 can (14-1/2 oz.) diced tomatoes, undrained
1 pkg. (6 oz.) Stuffing Mix (Stove Top for Chicken from Kraft)
1/2 cup water
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 to 2 lb. boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-size pieces
1 tsp. dried basil leaves
1 or 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese


Mix the tomatoes with the stuffing, garlic and water until they're moist and hold together. I do this before I cut up the chicken so the stuffing has time to absorb all the moisture from the other ingredients. Add more tomatoes or water if you want it moister.


I used a 1.65 pound package of Purdue chicken boobies from Wal-mart. At $5 the most expensive ingredient in the recipe. The stuffing mix is just 79 cents!


Cut those lovely chunks of flesh into just as lovely but smaller and soon to be scrumptious pieces of chicken.  


You want to layer the mix and the chicken and some basil. The recipe calls for a cup of cheese but I ended up using two and a half. I do love cheese!


That's what it looks like once I did all the layering. I was supposed to use a 3 quart dish but unfortunately I didn't have that size so I used a 4 quart. As a result the dish was a little thin and got a mite crispy but it still tastes great. It's baked for 40 minutes at 400f but I could have probably gotten away with baking at 375f.


Here's the tasty but crispy results. It was only the edges of the dish that got crispy due to the higher heat exchange that the proximity to the Pyrex brought.


And despite eating a fair quantity of the food, I still had enough leftovers to feed me yesterday (I made the chicken on Wednesday night), today and plenty for lunch on Saturday too. If you're fixing the dish for 2 people it won't go as far but for the cost and time involved, it's a pretty nice dinner option.