Crock Pot Chicken Cordon Bleu

Friday again and another great recipe! Today we welcome Ashley from Spunky Suds with a recipe that will work for company or for a weeknight dinner. Oh, and make sure to check out her soaps – they rock!!

I was searching for a recipe for Chicken Cordon Bleu and much to my disappointment, I found that most recipes called for ingredients such as stove top stuffing and cream of chicken soup. I don’t know about you, but I’m not too keen on feeding my family meals that are full of MSG and ingredients that I can’t even pronounce, (I like to use this rule of thumb—if I can’t pronounce it, I shouldn’t use it—and that goes for food and also for skin care).

I know that I can’t micromanage everything in my life, but there are parts that I can certainly avoid. After much searching, I was finally able to find a recipe that sounded good and used real food for ingredients! I made a few adjustments to mine, and we are happy to add this to one of our special family recipes!

Place chicken breasts between sheets of plastic wrap. Using a mallet, pound each chicken breast to 1/4″ thickness. Honestly, this was so much fun!

Place 1 cheese slice and 1 ham slice on each breast. I bought a huge block of swiss cheese slices at Costco–and we love cheese–so I actually did 3 pieces per chicken breast.

Roll up each breast and using a toothpick, secure the ends, then coat each in roll of chicken in flour & shake off any excess. In a large skillet, add a few tablespoons of butter and turn your heat to med/high. When the butter is melted and hot, carefully place your chicken rolls in the skillet and brown both sides of the chicken.

Once they are a nice golden color, add chicken to crock pot but make sure you remember to remove the toothpicks!

Now for the sauce:

In a saucepan over medium/high heat, melt butter and add the salt, pepper, onions and the sugar and whisk to combine. Add the flour, and whisk quickly until bubbly and smooth. Add the broth, cream & milk and keep on whisking over med. heat until it has thickened. Add grated cheese (or cheese slices) and stir until melted and sauce is smooth and creamy.

Pour the sauce over chicken and cover. Cook on low for 5-6 hours or on high for 3-4 hours.

Crock Pot Chicken Cordon Bleu

•4-6 Boneless, skinless Chicken Breasts

•4 to 6 slices Swiss or Provolone cheese

•4 to 6 thin slices smoked ham

•1/4 to 1/2 cup all-purpose flour to coat the chicken

Sauce

•1 Cup milk

•1 cup heavy cream

•1 cup chicken broth

•1 1/2 cups Cheddar, Swiss or Colby cheese-grated (I used swiss slices)

•1/2 cup of grated Parmesan cheese (opt)

•2-4 tablespoons butter

•2 heaping tablespoons flour

•1 tsp. sauteed onions or minced onions

•1/2 tsp. pepper

•1 tsp. salt

•2 teaspoons white granulated sugar

Instructions:

Place chicken breasts between sheets of plastic wrap. Using a mallet, pound each chicken breast to 1/4″ thickness. Place 1 cheese slice and 1 ham slice on each breast. Roll up each breast and using a toothpick, secure the ends, then coat each in roll of chicken in flour & shake off any excess. In a large skillet, add a few tablespoons of butter and turn your heat to med/high. When the butter is melted and hot, carefully place your chicken rolls in the skillet and brown both sides of the chicken. Once they are a nice golden color, add chicken to crock pot. Make sure you remember to remove the toothpicks!

Sauce:

Pour the sauce over chicken and cover. Cook on low for 5-6 hours or on high for 3-4 hours.

Ashley Haynes lives in the Inland Northwest, is a stay at home wife and homeschooling mother of 5. Her and her husband enjoy small scale farming with cows, chickens, and more. Ashley loves to bake and provide nutritional meals for her family. She likes being active and enjoys hobbies such as milking her cows, running, and 4-wheeling, just to name a few. God is first in her life and she strives to please Him in all she does.

In 2009 Ashley started researching soap-making. It was 2010 before she became brave enough to try her first batch of soap. Not wanting to spend a bunch of money to get set up with all the right the equipment, (in case it turned out to be something she didn’t enjoy) her first batch of soap was made in a sheetrock mud pan, was not blended correctly and not a great color. But regardless, she fell in love with the process and Spunky Suds was born! Ashley is passionate about providing natural, healthy and fun soaps for everyone!

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http://www.onwithyourstory.com Nancy

This recipe sounds good, but I wonder why do it in the crockpot? Once all the prep work, browning, and sauce-making are done, it would likely only take 20 minutes more to bake in the oven. If the issue is not having the time for prep before dinner time, then the dish could be assembled in the morning, put in the fridge, and baked later. The other possibility is to avoid heating the house by running the oven–a real advantage in Sacramento where the summer temps often exceed 100 degrees. Still, on hot days, I go for main dish salads like chef, nicoise, antipasto, taco.
- Stacy
  
  Nancy, I get asked this question a lot and it’s a good one. In this recipe the chicken is only browned in the skillet and it finishes cooking in the oven. Around here, we don’t like to turn on the oven in the summer heat, so the crock pot is a great tool!
  The slow cooking in the crock pot makes the chicken soooo tender that the oven just can’t beat it.
  Also, I do know that lots of people like to use their crock pot while they’re in their camper and they might have a cooktop but not an oven.
http://quickeasycheaphealthy.com Anne @ Quick and Easy Cheap and Healthy

Yum, these sound really good! I love chicken cordon bleu!
- Stacy
  
  I just like that blue is spelled bleu.
http://youngwifesguide.com/ Jami Leigh

My husband loves chicken cordon bleu! But I have never found a recipe without cream of whatever soups. Thank you so much!! This is terrific!
- Stacy
  
  Yay for husband!
Sonya Newton

Hi Thanks for the recipe and all the great tips you often put on, I am from the Uk and have found in most cases not all if you search for american recipes you do tend to get alot of them suggesting adding a pack of some kind of soup mix or yellow cake mix etc like you say, however i have found that a lot of english recipes dont tend to do that we dont really cook that way much,it may be worth searching some uk ones for ideas, although they do weigh everything instead of the lovely cup measures that you americans give, Thanks again i look forward to your latest emails xx
- Stacy
  
  That’s when my kitchen scale comes in handy!
Cathy

I wans’t going to look at this because I, too, thought it would be full of packaged ingredients (mushroom soup,stuffing, etc). I’m glad I checked!! I will definitely try this!
- Stacy
  
  See, that’s the good thing about this website and Fridays. Since our family changed to a whole foods diet last March, I don’t post recipes with packaged ingredients. If a guest poster happens to include one, I always make sure to include a link to a homemade version….so, you can always look here for good recipes without worrying about prepackaged foods.