Pizza Chicken

Pizza is one of my favorite �go-to�, quick and easy meals. It's delicious. I love most toppings, but I especially love chicken on my pizza. When I came across this great Pizza Chicken recipe. I think my heart skipped a beat, and my taste buds started watering. My favorite foods, together, but without all the extra dough-y carbs. Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

Although this pizza recipe is called �Pizza Chicken�, it's more like cheese-and-pepperoni-stuffed-chicken-breasts. But either way, it's delicious and simple! Exactly how home cook and food blogger Valerie of �Valerie's Kitchen� wanted it to be. Valerie's on-line kitchen focuses on providing simple, seasonal meal solutions for busy households and this chicken recipe ticks all those boxes and then some.

We all know (and love) pizza, right? That wonderful flatbread topped with tomato sauce and cheese and then baked in the oven until the sauce flows and the cheese gets ooey gooey? The term was first recorded in the 10th century in a Latin manuscript, although the modern pizza recipe was invented in Naples, Italy. Pizza was (thankfully) brought to the United States in the late 19th century by none other than Italian immigrants. The country's first pizzeria, Lombardi's, opened its doors in 1905 and since then pizza consumption has exploded in the U.S. and Canada with pizza chains such as Pizza Hut, Papa John's, and Domino's. An interesting statistic: thirteen percent of the U.S. population consumes pizza on any given day. That is a huge amount of pizza! (Did I mention I love left-overs?)

So how is this Pizza Chicken recipe anything like pizza? Well... it kind of isn't, but that is what Valerie's first two sons dubbed the dish, and that is what they have called it ever since. What it is, however, is a chicken recipe that is wholesome, and simple and calls for only a few ingredients, such as part skim ricotta cheese (cut those calories wherever you can!), sliced pepperoni, parmesan cheese, marinara sauce, boneless, skinless chicken breasts, and a few other herbs and spices for seasoning. With this chicken recipe, a little goes a long way. Before you're finished, you'll double the amount of chicken breasts you have, just by cutting them in half! And then you stuff them. The pizza stuffing recipe is simple � your cheeses, an egg (for binding), spices and pepperoni. Place about two tablespoons of �stuffing� onto each halved chicken breast, roll it up and place it into a cooking dish. At this stage, you're almost done!

For your next step in this delicious pizza chicken dinner recipe, you want to smother your rolled chicken pieces in marinara sauce and cheese (for the cheesy topping, make sure you have some mozzarella and maybe even a little cheddar � you can get low-fat versions of both of these cheeses if you're calorie conscious). Place the cooking dish (with your Chicken Pizza) into the oven, cook for about 45 minutes and you have delicious, elegant but easy Chicken Pizza!

This chicken dinner recipe goes a long way, but boneless, skinless chicken breasts can be expensive. If you have a hungry crowd, consider purchasing bone-in chicken breasts and filleting them yourself. There are plenty of ways to play around with this chicken recipe to make it your very own � low-fat cheese options, different cheeses, turkey pepperoni... the possibilities are endless! So, what are you waiting for?