Hunters Chicken comes in many guises, mine is influenced by British Pub versions, a chicken breast wrapped in bacon, with cheese & BBQ sauce.
It is a wonderfully easy dish to cook, and both the chicken and sauce can be prepared in advance, then cooked when ready, with a total prep and cook time of around 50 minutes.
Chicken Wrapped in Bacon with Cheese and BBQ Sauce
I will put my hands on my heart and say that I have no idea how or why this dish became known as hunters chicken.
In Italian, it is called cacciatore, and it is a simple but rather elegant dish that I adore. I have both a slow cooker chicken cacciatore and rabbit cacciatore recipe here already.
The French have a version called Chicken Chasseur. Again, it is a simple and elegant affair. Both the Italians and the French use wine, maybe tomatoes, a little bacon, and cook it nice and slow as a stew.
We Brits seem to have taken a very different approach!
I'm a pluralist at heart when it comes to food, so I'm equally at home with the rustic elegance of old-school European dishes as I am with this "silly" but gloriously satisfying recipe.
I "cut" my BBQ sauce with a few things to knock back the sweetness and add a little spice. But this recipe is obscenely easy to make.
If you love these flavours, do check out my BBQ chicken pasta recipe, it is this in pasta form, and it is delicious!
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I prepare this in advance?
Absolutely! You can cut the chicken, stuff it, wrap it in bacon and then wrap it in cling film.
This can be done 2-3 days in advance and kept in the fridge. This actually results in a slightly better-looking and tighter-wrapped chicken.
Likewise, you can make the sauce days in advance, although it is so simple that there is little time to be saved.
What other cheeses can I use?
This recipe is full of big flavours, sweet BBQ sauce, Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco, so you need a cheese with some flavour.
You could go for something Swiss, like Gruyere or maybe even some shredded mozzarella. They will deliver all of the glory of stretchy cheese but lack the right punch of flavour.
A perfect alternative to cheddar would be a hard-aged goats cheese.
Are Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce essential?
Not at all, and you can add them to taste if you like to play with the balance. This sauce is fine to eat uncooked, so you can taste it as you go.
What BBQ sauce do you use?
Just like my slow cooker sausages, I have landed on Sweet Baby Rays BBQ sauce for this recipe. But you should absolutely use something that you like, but you do want something quite sweet!
Why is there no salt?
This recipe contains loads of bacon and cheese, and as a result, does not need any additional salt as far as I am concerned.
Serving Suggestions
For me, this is almost always hunters chicken and wedges, but here I have served it with some delicious polenta chips.
I tend to cook my wedges in an air fryer as it is quick and stress-free.
It is equally as good with proper chippy chips if you regularly use a deep-fat fryer or even air fryer chips. It's also wonderful with a good old-fashioned jacket potato!
I often see it served with a simple green salad, although I would personally stick with some peppery rocket or watercress.
When I am feeling as though I need some real comfort food, I serve this with mashed potatoes and peas.
Although you need to undo your belt buckle a notch after that one!
Equipment Used
I only mention specific brands of equipment if I think they make a material difference to a recipe. But if you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments section below the recipe.
- Oven.
- Baking dish.
- Kitchen knife.
- Chopping board.
- Grater.
- Mixing bowl.
- A combination of weighing scales and measuring spoons.
- Quick read meat thermometer.
British Pub Style Hunters Chicken Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 Skinless Chicken Breasts 400g Total
- 6-8 Slices Streaky Bacon 100g Total
- 100 g Cheddar Cheese 1 Cup
- 6 tablespoon BBQ sauce
- 2 tablespoon Tomato Passata
- 2 tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce
- ⅛ teaspoon Tabasco Sauce To Taste
- ½ teaspoon Black Pepper
Instructions
- Cut 35g of cheddar (around a quarter) from the block, grate it and set aside.
- Cut the remaining 65g into two pieces; you are looking to make a block roughly three-quarters of the length of the chicken breast.
- Take a chicken breast and slice it with a long, sharp knife on the long side of the breast roughly halfway through the breast. Fold open the chicken like a book and season the inside with lots of black pepper. Between the bacon, cheese and BBQ sauce, I do not think additional salt is required, but if you want to, now is the time to add salt.
- Place the cheese in the chicken, then fold it back into its original shape.
- Season the outside of the chicken breast generously with pepper.
- If your bacon is standard bacon from a supermarket, it will be a little too thick to wrap the chicken nicely, so scrape it with the blunt side of a knife to stretch it and thin it out a little.
- Starting on the underside of the chicken, begin wrapping the chicken breast in the bacon, continuing on where the previous slice finished to wrap it up completely in a single layer of bacon. Repeat with the second chicken breast and place them in a baking dish. Pop it in the oven and bake at 180°C or 350°F (fan mode) or 200°C or 400°F (normal mode) for 15 minutes.
- Mix together the bbq sauce, tomato passata, Worcestershire sauce, and Tabasco. Add the last two whilst tasting to get the sauce right for you.
- After the chicken has been cooking for 10 minutes, pour this sauce over the chicken and then sprinkle the remaining cheese over the chicken.Return to the oven and cook for another 15 minutes or so at 200°C or 400°F (fan mode) or 200°C or 400°F (normal mode). Until a thick part of the chicken breast reaches 68-69°C or around 155°F. Be careful to ensure that you are measuring the temperature of the chicken and not the cheese. Remove from the oven and rest for 5-7 minutes or until the temperature reaches 73°C or 165°F.
