Air Fryer Stuffed Chicken Breast Recipe

Our air fryer stuffed chicken breast recipe creates a fancy meal in just 30 minutes. The meat is juicy, and the filling is satisfyingly creamy, but above all, it’s good for your health.

Is This Chicken Good for You?

Our chicken breasts are stuffed with cheese, spinach, and pistachios. This combination brings to the meal flavors, textures, and also important nutrients. There are proteins from chicken and cheese, some vitamin C, iron, fiber, and antioxidants from spinach, and vitamin B6 from pistachios.

We adjusted the ingredient ratios to ensure that the meal retained its flavor and the macronutrients remained within their acceptable ranges. Each serving of our stuffed chicken breast now contains:

• 481 calories
• 10.3 g saturated fat
• 551 mg sodium

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Main Ingredients

Our air fryer stuffed chicken breast recipe is made with chicken breasts, cheese, spinach, pistachios, milk, and a few seasonings. It has the potential to be a heavy meal, so we lighten things up by adding some crisp vegetables on the side.

• Chicken

We typically pick skin-on chicken breasts because roasted chicken skin is the best-tasting part of the breast. Keeping the skin also helps the meat retain moisture and flavor better.

If you’re looking for a leaner option, you can use skinless breasts, or remove the skin for snacking later. We air-fried some at 400°F for 15 minutes for a crispy treat.

Also, when it comes to dealing with chicken breasts, we like to butterfly each one. This creates more space for the seasonings to cling onto, and in this case, for the filling to go to.

• Spinach-Cheese Filling

To turn the spinach into a filling, we blanched it briefly in hot water, shocked it in cold water, and cut it into small pieces. This vegetable shrinks a lot when cooked, so you can use more of it.

Cream cheese is a typical choice for stuffed chicken thanks to its soft, pliable nature. Besides cream cheese, we also incorporated some parmesan for an added depth of savoriness.

To increase the volume of the filling without piling on the saturated fat content, we mixed in some whole milk. This also helps soften the filling, and we prefer it this way.

Finally, we added nuts for more texture, pistachios being our nuts of choice. You can easily replace them with chopped almonds, walnuts, sunflower seeds, etc., if you prefer.

• Spices

The spices we use are paprika, cayenne, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, black pepper, and red pepper flakes. You can increase or decrease the hot spices as you wish — our version tastes pretty mild in terms of heat.

• Vegetables

We like to serve our stuffed chicken with lettuce and julienned carrots. You can add more crisp veggies to this mix, like radish, cucumber, bell pepper, etc. It’s always a good thing to include more veggies in your meals!

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Tips for Making

As the process involves cutting the meat, working with fresh chicken is a lot easier than frozen chicken. If frozen is your only choice, there’s a neat trick to thawing it in just 30 minutes:

First, wrap the frozen meat tightly with plastic wrap and place it into a bowl in the sink. Let the tap water flow slowly into the bowl, creating a constantly changing pool of closer to room-temp water.

After 30 minutes, the meat should be partially thawed and pliable. It should not be left to come to room temperature, because bacteria present on the meat can multiply more rapidly and spoil it.

How Long to Cook

At room temperature, stuffed chicken breasts will need 20 minutes at 400°F in the air fryer, stuffed or not. Large, thick pieces of frozen meat don’t cook evenly, so we always recommend thawing first.

How to Store and Reheat Leftovers

The leftovers can last for up to 5 days in the fridge. We advise against freezing them as the cream cheese filling doesn’t thaw well.

You can place them all into an air-tight container or wrap individual stuffed chicken breasts with plastic wrap. Individual wrapping can be especially good if your fridge is a bit crowded.

To reheat, air-fry once again at 400°F for 7 minutes.

Side Dishes

In addition to the lettuce and carrots, we believe the chicken needs some carbs. We found our potato wedges to be a delicious candidate — fluffy, tender, delicious.

To round the meal off nicely, we served it all with some chilled lemon watermelon juice.

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Other Delicious Air-Fried Chicken Recipes in Our Archive

I personally find the salad that serves with these air-fried chicken super delicious. The meat is sticky and flavorful, as always, but the salad with multiple textures and notes of freshness really bring out the taste of the chicken. It's something I'd consider making a lot during the week.

If you enjoy spicy and creamy foods, chicken satay is the dish for you. It has small chicken pieces slathered in spices, skewered, grilled, and served with an iconic peanut sauce.

Air Fryer Stuffed Chicken Breast Recipe

5 from 1 vote

This air fryer stuffed chicken breast recipe makes delicious chicken breasts stuffed with a flavorful, creamy cheese-spinach filling in just 30 minutes.

- by Tuyet Pham, Luna Regina, 2022-06-17

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• cook TIME 20 mins
• prep TIME 10 mins
• total TIME 30 mins

• COURSE Main Course
• CUISINE American
• SERVINGS
  4

  servings
• CALORIES 484 kcal

INGREDIENTS

1x2x3x

• 26 oz skinless boneless chicken breasts (4 medium-sized)
• 4.5 oz cream cheese
• 0.25 oz shredded parmesan cheese
• 1/4 cup whole milk
• 6 oz lettuce (half red, and half green)
• 2 oz spinach
• 0.5 oz carrot (cut into matchsticks)
• 1 oz pistachios
• 2 1/2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp parsley (chopped)
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1/2 tsp cayenne
• 1/2 tsp onion powder
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp ground black pepper

INSTRUCTIONS

Image instructions

1

Fill a pot halfway with water and heat over medium heat. Meanwhile, butterfly the chicken breasts (26 oz in total).

2

Place them in a bowl along with 2 1/2 tbsp olive oil, 1 tsp paprika, 1/2 tsp cayenne, and 1/2 tsp onion powder. Rub the meat to season it thoroughly, then leave to marinate.

3

As the water comes to a boil, add to it 2 oz spinach to cook for 1 minute. Fish the cooked spinach out and place it into a bowl of ice water. Squeeze it dry and chopped.

4

In a bowl, combine the cooked spinach with 4.5 oz cream cheese, 1/4 cup whole milk, 1 oz pistachios, 0.25 oz parmesan cheese, 1/2 tsp garlic powder, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes, and 1/2 tsp ground black pepper.

5

Fill the butterflied chicken with this spinach-cheese mixture.

6

Cook in the air fryer at 400°F for 20 minutes. Sprinkle chopped parsley on top

7

Enjoy with lettuce and carrots.

NUTRITION

Nutrition Facts

Air Fryer Stuffed Chicken Breast Recipe

Amount Per Serving (1 serving)

Calories 484Calories from Fat 261

% Daily Value*

Fat 29g

45%

Saturated Fat 10g

63%

Polyunsaturated Fat 3g

Monounsaturated Fat 9g

Cholesterol 171mg

57%

Sodium 557mg

24%

Potassium 905mg

26%

Carbohydrate 6g

2%

Fiber 2g

8%

Sugar 2g

2%

Protein 47g

94%

Vitamin A 2862IU

57%

Vitamin C 9mg

11%

Calcium 88mg

9%

Iron 2mg

11%

* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.

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