Stuffed Pesto Chicken with Orzo Risotto

Stuffed Pesto Chicken with Orzo Risotto is a stunning comfort food recipe done with Italian style. This chicken breast is marinated, covered in panko breadcrumbs then packed full of pesto, provolone and mozzarella cheese. Served with a risotto made with orzo pasta, this dish is rich with umami flavor as it is topped with a black truffle Romano cheese. Together this combo is show stopper.

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PRODUCTS FEATURED
YODER SMOKERS YS480S PELLET GRILL WITH ACS: https://bit.ly/3UwzRJl
FINEX 1QT CAST IRON SAUCE POT: https://bit.ly/3XuTtOW
CATTLEMAN’S GRILL ITALIANO SEASONING: https://bit.ly/3vNW3Vt
THE BRINER MINI, 3.5 QUART: https://bit.ly/3YLZdoW
SMOKE ON WHEELS BBQ MARINADE: https://bit.ly/3H5DrVp
LODGE 10″ SEASONED CARBON STEEL SKILLET: https://bit.ly/3XBgBvf
FINEX 10″ CAST IRON SKILLET: https://bit.ly/3CT1qpv

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00:00 Introduce the recipe
00:46 Prep the risotto
01:12 Prep the chicken
02:53 Brown up the panko breadcrumbs
03:52 Dice up the morels
04:34 Stuff the chicken
06:33 Send the chicken breasts to the grill
07:16 Start the risotto
08:11 Add the orzo pasta
09:19 Add stock and stir
11:39 Pull the chicken
12:04 Plate the dish
12:51 Grab a taste

Hey everybody I’m Chef Tom with atbbq.com and this is stuffed pesto chicken with orzo risotto well today we’re doing some comfort food with an Italian Flair we’re gonna be making stuffed chicken breasts so stuff full of cheeses pesto coated in Panko and baked on the grill until that cheese

Just oozes out and starts forming a crust around the outside my mouth’s watering already and we’re gonna pair it with a risotto but not just a regular risotto we’re going to be using orzo pasta so kind of different than doing your risotto with rice they look similar

They cook up slightly different but the texture is still fantastic so first thing we got to do is warm up some stock for our risotto then we’ll hop into prepping the chicken so I found a package of dried morel mushrooms at Whole Foods and I thought that’s going

To be perfect for our risotto so we have to rehydrate these obviously they’re all dried out and crispy well we need hot stock to make risotto anyway so we’re just going to add most of this quart of stock that we’re using for the risotto to the pot with the morels bring it up

To a simmer and just let it kind of simmer away until These are nice and soft now on to trimming and then pounding out our chicken breasts to stuff these I’m just cleaning up the edges here any membranes I see I know they left that red meat on just

For me but it’s not going to last once we start pounding these things out now I want to get these pounded out pretty thin so that the chicken can wrap around the filling I’m going to put just a little bit of fat down on our work surface so that it doesn’t tear it

Slides and then taking the flat side of the Mallet I’m just going to kind of pound and push especially the thicker areas out until they’re all roughly the same thickness and doesn’t take a lot of force in fact you got to tell yourself to be gentle a little bit

All right so that’s all roughly like quarter to half inch thick in that range all about even that’s what we’re going for we’re gonna get these into some marinade as we get them pounded out and we’re marinating in the Smoke On Wheels barbecue marinade which is really

A very a nice savory kind of buttery type marinade with great flavors that go great with Italian food like garlic thyme lemon so we’ll just layer these in one by one as we get them pounded out final chicken breast here cover that in Smoke On Wheels

And we’re going to set that aside to marinate for the next 30 or 45 minutes so now in the meantime we’re going to toast up our Panko bread crumbs to go on the outside let’s start with a couple tablespoons of olive oil I’ll let that warm up just a little bit

I’m gonna put a little seasoning in here with the panko we’re using the Cattleman’s Grill Italiano I’m just going to add it to the oil now so it can start to toast and then we’re using one cup of Panko bread crumbs again this is going to coat the outside of the stuffed chicken

But you can see how it’s pretty light in color we want it to get a little bit of a darker toast onto it visually it’s more pleasing but more importantly it tastes better when it’s toasted I’m going to keep this moving so you don’t Scorch the bottom and add any bitterness

Once we kind of got that golden brown thing going on you can call it good and I think we are there our morels have fully rehydrated now so I’m pulling those out so we can dice them up for our risotto give these a good mince so that they

Distribute evenly all the way throughout our orzo so fun to be able to find morels in a dried form because typically only see them when a buddy brings them in and find them out in the wild all right get that all chopped up set this aside

And get ready to work on stuffing our chicken so now we’re ready to stuff the chicken I’m gonna pull this out of our marinade we’ll wipe off most of that but we also want to leave enough behind to help stick to the Panko and we’ll just start right there in the panko

I’m going to hit it with a little bit more of that Italiano seasoning that we saw earlier but don’t come at me too hard but I am using store-bought pesto today if I’m gonna make a shortcut every once in a while this is one that I don’t mind

So get about a tablespoon of that we’re going to lay out our provolone cheese just one slice and I’ve got about one ounce of low moisture mozzarella and we’re just going to wrap this right around again don’t be worried that the cheese is going to spill out it actually turns

Into a pretty cool thing and we’ll just roll that through this toasted panko we’re going to transfer that over to our sheet pan but first i’m going to hit that with a little duck fat spray but you can also just use parchment but honestly the parchment usually tears

When the cheese melts so I’d rather just put a little fat down and we’ll do a little bit more cleaning on the pan than if we had parchment but that’s all right but that’s all there is to it and do it three more times but today we’re cooking on the Yoder

Smokers ys-480s pellet grill it’s running at 425 degrees set up for indirect grilling and we’re burning Hickory pellets so we’re going to load this up on the top shelf so we can make sure that we don’t overdo the Bottom now if the cheese starts oozing out and we need to like crisp

That up a little bit we can always move this down later but for now we’re just going to leave it here on the second shelf um close this up we’ll check on in about 20 minutes maybe give it a little spin so I expect the chicken to take about 45

Minutes or so maybe closer to an hour to fully cook through it just depends on how big each one of your chicken breasts are but in that amount of time what we need to do is prepare our orzo and we’re doing it the risotto style today so

We’re going to get the skillet fired up because this is a lengthy process it’s going to require you to stand here and stir for quite a while we’re going to start with a tablespoon each of unsalted butter and extra virgin olive oil so now I’ve got a quarter cup of minced

Shallots we want to sweat these down just a little bit I over medium Heat now off to the side here you can see that I’ve got my one quart pot filled with that chicken stock it’s steaming hot still and that’s really important when I have that hot so it doesn’t slow

Down the cooking process as we add it one Ladle at a time and it’s also got all of that great morel mushroom flavor infused into it so this is going to be a great heavy on the mushroom flavor profile that’s starting to soften up and getting a little brown

So next we’re going to add in one clove of garlic minced and three quarter cup of orzo pasta toast this up for just a minute just one of those coated in that oil and then let them sit there and kind of toast before we start to hydrate them

We’re also going to throw our morels in and get a little bit of color on those here in the popping of the pasta now we’re getting a little brown on the outside there’s mushrooms they’re softening up even more so now we’re gonna add a little white

Wine take about a quarter cup of dry white wine that’s going to reduce down to just about nothing and then we’ll be ready to start adding our stock and that’s when everything’s really going to cook that’s when our pasta is going to cook start to hydrate we’ll get

The mushrooms cooked all the way through as well so liquid gone now we can start adding in our warm stock and then this is pretty much your life now for the next you know 20 to 30 minutes adding stock agitating you’re working the starch out of the

Pasta like we would do with rice in a proper risotto and once that liquid’s just about gone you’re going to add another Ladle full so we’ll check back in once the stock level is getting a little bit lower and our orzo is puffing up I’ve been stirring away for about 20

Minutes now last of our stock is going into the pan I’ve been checking the texture of the orzo as well it’s still a little bit hard right in the center but that’s perfect I’d rather end it there than go like full mushy especially because this is probably going to sit here for the

Next 10 minutes or so before we’re ready to get our chicken out so with a little liquid still left in there we’re gonna melt another tablespoon of butter in here to finish this off and then a little bit of cheese and that we will call good we’ll give a little

Taste test see what we need to do seasoning wise and then we’ll let it kind of hang out as we go finish up that chicken so this cheese is a black truffle Romano cheese so it’s got fantastic flavor that’s a little bit soft for a Romano so it melts really nicely

Into a you know pasta or a risotto I’m just super creamy just all melted down let’s get a quick taste and turn the heat off oh my gosh this right here is for the mushroom lover fantastic flavor amazingly not Bland despite the fact that we haven’t put any salt in here yet

So let’s season it up with just a little bit of salt and cover it until it’s ready to go when we just hit 45 minutes on the chicken cook so let’s go check that out wow these look amazing I’m gonna check internal with the instant read thermometer just creeping

Up on 155 and that 155 to 160 range is right where we want it so I’m betting all four of these are just about ready to come off 164. look at the cheese skirt all right let’s pull these out of here so gonna get it all plated up now start

With a couple scoops of our orzo risotto on the bottom let’s go ahead and slice this one open now this is the one that had the least amount of leakage but I bet it’s got some good crust going on on the bottom oh yeah all those crusty little bits down there so juicy

I’m excited to taste this one plop it right on top finished it off with just a little bit of parsley time to dig in and get a taste foreign cheesy goodness pesto is the first flavor that hits for sure but that cheesy goodness I love the way it’s crusted on the

Bottom you’ve got the crunch on the outside of the chicken which is a great contrast to the creaminess of the cheese I’m just risotto orzo risotto ma’am so creamy savory Umami earthy mushroom flavor coming through fantastic compliment to the pesto which is kind of bright Sharp these two go together really well but

You also could pull either one off without the other anytime you want to well thank you guys so much for watching be sure to check out atbbq.com for all the products featured in today’s video if you enjoy the recipe hit that subscribe button and if you have any questions or comments so there’s

Anything you’d like to see me cook let me know in the comment section down below and let’s be good to one another for more recipes tips and techniques head over to atbbq.com the sauce all things barbecue we’re barbecue Legends are made