Older Bolder Life

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the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast: The Best Damn Smoked Baby Back Ribs

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Long time readers appreciate the fact that we’re big fans of grilled and carefully smoked proteins here; I suppose partly due to our Texas heritage and partly due to the unassailable fact that proteins fresh off the grill or from the smoker are almost always outrageously good.

My friends and I cooked our first pork ribs “on our own” in high school while on camping trips around Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado, and had plenty of hometown, old-fashioned barbecue pit masters around to show us how the real deal que was done.

Over the years we’ve grilled ribs, smoked ribs over live fire, on pellet rigs, and even in jury rigged near-smokers on the beach, and even at times resorted to cooking ribs lows and slow in the oven when pressed by weather or time.

I’ve even dabbled with friends in the competition barbecue world off and on, and we began to notice 4 or 5 years ago, along with an army of others, that a trend was developing in the meat smoking world – the pursuit of “fall off the bone tender” ribs, despite the competition smoked rib standard being ribs with a bit more tooth (a key feature being ribs holding their perfect shape when cut into individual rib sections).

As with most things related to health, fitness, nutrition, and cooking, I firmly believe that we all need to experiment with different approaches (particularly with regard to nutrition, fitness, and cooking) to find our own “sweet spot” that works the best for our unique physiologies and taste buds.

Dialing back into the rib issue at hand today, my compadres and I began to see an explosion of recipes calling for a 3-2-1 rib cook – three hours low and slow in a smoker, 2 hours foiled wrap (still low and slow heat), followed by another hour unwrapped and sauced. To my/our way of thinking, that almost always resulted in ribs that were overcooked and mushy; sure, when you picked up a rib or part of a rack by the bone the meat would fall away, but the texture was frankly off-putting.

At the other end of the spectrum, having dried out dozens (if not hundreds) of racks over the years cooking too fast (too hot) or too long, we began, as many others have, to experiment with alternative cooks to perfect the baby back experience.

And while none of my crew of compadres would ever claim we “invented the idea”, we’ve now joined the ranks of those who find the perfect rib cook formula to be a 3-0.75-.5 hour cook as follows. By the way, this recipe is configured as written for a 2 full baby back rib cook; that’s what we usually do at home on rib day. Adjust amounts as needed for your cook.

The Essential Roadmap to the Perfect Baby Back Rib Cook

Clean and trim 2 full baby back rib sections; peel the back side membranes like your grandfather taught you to do. Just to make them easier to handle, I usually spit each individual full rack into 2 more or less equal pieces.

Coat your ribs with your rub of choice and throw in the fridge for at least a couple of hours, removing 30-45 minutes before starting your cook.

A quick thought on rubs – there are literally thousands available commercially, and if you do a bit of digging, they’re almost all built around a common formula – salt, sugar (or other sweeteners), and complementary spice arrays. By all means experiment, shop around, compare ingredients, and see what your family enjoys the most, though I’d encourage (if not demand) you to make up your own rubs to control the quality of ingredients and freshness of spices used. We have a go to rub recipe that we use on all sorts of meats, I need to share here on OBL one of these days…

Fire your smoker and heat to 225; being long time Texas folk, my lovely wife and I are partial to using pecan and/or oak for our rib cooks, though they’re great with cherry as well.

Place the racks in the smoker and cook for 3 hours at a steady 225; many aficionados insist that ribs should be spritzed very 30-45 minutes (liquid of choice, often apple juice, a secret mop recipe, or water and ACV mix). To be honest, most days we don’t do that around our camp as I’ve never really be able to see a meaningful difference with or without.

At three hours, pull the rib sections, place meat side up on a large piece of heavy duty foil, and brush with a braising liquid of choice – once again, there’s a huge amount of variation in what folks are using out there. When we’re really needing to make an impression, I’ll melt 4-5 tablespoons of grass fed butter and combine with an equal amount of organic honey, and brush that over the meat side and underside of each rack. Then wrap with the foil and seal snugly; by the way, I typically place the racks meat side down when in the foil to expose the meat to more of the braising liquids brushed on before wrapping.

Now the ribs go back on the smoker (or in the oven – they’re not absorbing smoke while wrapped of course) at 225 for 3/4 to a full hour; experiment a bit to see what produces the results you like the most.

When that cook has finished, carefully remove the ribs from the foil, sauce with the sauce of your choice (there are lots of nifty low carb and keto options out there, or better yet, make your own), and throw them back on the smoker for another 30-60 minutes, meat side up.

How Do I Know My Ribs are Done?

A quick confession is due here – I cook just about everything on the grill or in the smoker to internal temperature targets these days instead of using time; if you’re not you should be, and my food has never been better since doing so.

Ribs are probably the only protein we don’t cook to internal temp targets – it’s very difficult to get accurate internal meat temps given the thin bands of meat on pork ribs (baby backs more-so than spareribs) and the proximity of the rib bones.

That said, and pending a host of variables including the actual size/thickness of your rib sections, baby back ribs are typically done in 4-5 hours using this approach, and the thicker, fattier St. Louis Cut rubs or spare ribs will take 5-7 hours (consider using a 4-0.75-.5 hour run to start) to finish.

Finally, you’ll know your ribs are done to perfection when you perform a bounce test – pick up a rack with tongs and give it a gentle bounce – if the meat cracks along the edge of a bone – you’re in rib heaven and it’s time to eat.

Grab some ribs and git ‘er done this weekend.

Enjoy.

the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast: The Best Damn Chicken Salad

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Today’s recipe is one of those pulled from our family archives, an almost long-forgotten favorite that tumbled to the bottom of the proverbial stack years ago.

I first posted this recipe on our fly fishing blog ChiWulff years back in 2012, with the following introduction back then (the reference to my orthopedist and pending surgery was about a tibial plateau fracture I suffered on a trip to Montana…) –

The risk of opening with a trite platitude duly noted – life has it’s ups and downs.

One doesn’t have to look very for examples this week.

It’s still hotter than hell’s kitchen in much of the country, it’s already mid-August and not nearly enough fishing has been done, the domestic and world equity markets have been whipsawing up and down like a cheap roller-coaster and more than one pundit has proclaimed it’s the end of the economic world as we know it.

The proverbial shit has hit the fan a bit closer to home this week too, though we’ll leave our whining at that for now.

What’s a fly fishing foodie to do when the times get tough?

Easy – go fish and reach for some comfort food. As my ill-humored orthopedist has condemned me to crutches prior to surgery, rendering wading nigh impossible, reaching for comfort food has taken on new importance.

She Who Must Be Obeyed has returned home after a 10 day business excursion and graciously consented to make dinner last night – serving a camp Chi Wulff fave and powerful comfort food -The Best Damn Chicken Salad on the Planet.

Life looks a little better this morning. I don’t know how something so simple can look so good, but this one just works magic. Simple and direct with ingredients to cover all the essential elements of gustatory sensation – this is a great one.

Three points to note if you please; one – use any sort of cooked chicken you like in this creation, though our favorite of late is a smoke/grilled bird done on a pellet grill. You can use any rub or slather you like on your own smoke/grilled bird, oven roast your chicken, or even pick up a rotisserie bird from your favorite grocer.

Two, this, like most chicken salad recipes begs to be adjusted to using what’s on hand – though I’d challenge you to try it once as written – it really is damn good.

And three, we first stumbled across this recipe back in a pre-keto / pre-low carb days, and used to eat this one on the river (or hiking trail, or drive) on kaiser rolls with a hefty sprinkle of blue cheese crumbles thrown in, along with several generous shakes of Cholula. I have no idea what the hell makes that combination work so well, but it just does. Though we’re no longer in the sandwich camp, a sprinkle of blue cheese crumbles on this chicken salad sends it over the top. The inclusion of a few grapes might be seen by some as being too carb-friendly, though we make this one on our carb refeed day and call it good.

Just try it.

4 cups grilled /roasted chicken, chopped
1 generous cup celery, chopped small
1/2 cup sliced green onions, white and green
1/2 cup toasted pecans, rough chopped
1/2 cup grapes, halved
1/2 cup red bell pepper, diced small
1/2 cup yellow bell pepper, diced small
1/2 apple, grated (firm fleshed, tart – we like Granny Smiths or Pink Ladies)
1/2 cup avocado or olive oil mayo
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
Salt and pepper to taste
Crumbled blue cheese at service (optional)

This one couldn’t be easier to put together.

Prep, roast, cool, bone, and cut up your chicken, then combine with remainder of the ingredients and mix well.

Adjust the amount of mayo, salt, and pepper to suit; add the blue cheese crumbles at service.

Enjoy.

the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast: Smoked Santa Maria Tri-Tip

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As we’ve all plowed through the recent holiday weekend, which some might (erroneously in fact) argue is the peak of “the grilling season” in the States, we find ourselves settling into a nice routine of grilling several outstanding proteins every week and enjoying them, most often with a cool, flavorful, refreshing salad over the following days.

Recently we’ve been playing around with tri-tip, a somewhat unique cut of meat that is kinda’ve of a cross between a largish steak and a smallish roast; my butcher buddies argue that it’s really a roast cut from the lower part of the sirloin, so it shares some of the (lesser marbled and chewier) characteristics of sirloin steaks.

Most tri-tips you’ll run across today have their generous fat caps and silver skin already trimmed for you, weighing in somewhere in the 2-3 pound range most often; untrimmed they can run close to 5 pounds.

Steve Raichlen in his ginormous book BBQ USA has a nifty, and fairly detailed explanation of the tri-tip’s apparently indisputable ties to Santa Maria, California; if you’re into food history it’s a great read with Raichlen’s typical dry humor woven in nicely.

The rub recipe below is adapted from Raichlen’s suggestion of the classic Santa Maria rub his travels and research unearthed years ago, though I think it’s much better with a bit more cracked pepper and the Mexican oregano. And don’t be put off by what appears to be a hefty dose of granulated garlic in the rub, it melts in nicely and doesn’t overpower the flavors at all.

Of note, we’ve grilled this recipe over live fire for what seems like forever (red oak is the traditional wood of choice in Santa Maria), though of late we’ve taken to smoking this one at 225 until it’s 125-130 and searing in butter in a cast iron pan to crisp up the exterior, and keeping the interior a delightful, and delicious, medium rare.

The classic Santa Maria salsa served with this is a bit unusual as salsas go, but it’s damned good – I’ll share that recipe next week…

1 tbsp freshly cracked black pepper
2 tsp good coarse salt
2 tsp granulated garlic (or garlic powder)
1-2 tsp dried rosemary, crumbled
1 tsp dried Mexican oregano

1 tri-tip, 2-3 pounds, trimmed of fat cap and silver skin

Prepare the rub and generously season the tri-tip on all sides; then rest in the fridge for a minimum of an hour up to overnight.

For a smoked, pellet grill, low and slow cook, fire your grill/smoker to 225, and cook until reaching an internal temperature of 125 to 130 for medium rare (135-140 for medium).

Pull and sear in butter (or oil of choice) in cast iron quickly on your stove/grill to crisp and brown up the tri-tip, looking for a finished temp of 135 for medium rare, 145 for medium. Rest for 15 minutes, then slice thinly against the grain (don’t forget there are two grain directions in a tri-tip!).

For a standard, live-fire grill cook, cook for roughly 10 minutes per side to reach the medium rare temps above; pull and rest and serve as per above.

Next week I’ll share the classic Santa Maria salsa that is often served with this delightful protein.

Enjoy.

the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast: Smashed (Resistant) Potato Salad with Italian Sausage and Aioli

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Today’s Smashed (Resistant) Potato Salad with Italian Sausage and Aioli is posted in homage to the upcoming Memorial Day weekend; at least in years past this was most often a time we’d meet with friends in somebody’s big backyard to grill, play volleyball, and cultivate our early season sunburns and tall tale telling abilities.

I truly hope you’re scheduled to spend time with friends and family this weekend, and have some great food on the menu.

My other intent in posting this recipe was to remind folks of the health benefits of resistant starches, and share a recipe using potatoes – something that most of us eating lower carb tend to avoid in lieu of better choices. Don’t forget that cooked and cooled potatoes are a wonderful source of resistant starch, and here’s another great summer recipe to throw in the resistant starches are good pile…

This is a hearty potato salad, in fact my wife thinks it’s a meal in itself given the inclusion of a hearty Italian sausage (buy or make some quality fresh sausage); the aioli adds a load of healthy fats and a truckload of rich flavor as well.

I can’t imagine this without the dusting of ancho chile powder, but by all means consider that optional, and while the aioli recipe might sound complicated (if you’re not making mayo at home already), it’s a piece of cake.

Enjoy your long weekend.

Roughly 2 lb red-skinned potatoes, trimmed
Kosher salt

1/4 cup + up to 1/2 cup avocado oil, divided
1 medium sweet onion, chopped fine
1 small poblano pepper, stemmed, seeded, chopped small
3/4 pound fresh hot Italian sausage, casings removed
2 large egg yolks
1 large garlic clove, finely grated
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1/2 to 1 tbsp ancho chile powder
3-4 green onions, white and green parts, thinly sliced on the diagonal

Prep the spuds, place in a large pot and cover with cold water; season liberally with salt. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer under tender (20-25 minutes). Drain, let cool in a colander, then throw in the fridge for at least overnight and preferably 24 hours.

On the day you’re making the salad, preheat the oven to 450 and remove the spuds from the fridge.

Heat 1/4 cup of avocado oil in a skillet over medium high heat, then add the onions and poblanos and cook until they’re beginning to soften (about 5 minutes). Add the sausage, and breaking it up with a spoon cook until well-browned and cooked through (6-8 minutes). Now transfer the sausage to a fine meshed sieve placed over a measuring cup and let the oil drain; press on the solids occasionally – you’re looking for roughly 1/4 cup of sausage oil. Add up to 1/2 cup more avocado oil to get to 3/4 cup.

Now it’s time to make an aioli, and you have two options. Classically, you would combine the egg yolks, grated garlic, and a teaspoon of water in a bowl, then slowly whisk in the sausage oil until thickened and smooth (adding the lemon juice at the very end, along with salt to taste).

Alternatively, combine the egg yolks, grated garlic, a tsp of water, and the lemon juice in a small cylindrical container just bigger than the head of your immersion blender, add the oil all at once, and then use your immersion blender to quickly whip up your aioli (my preferred method, and the one we use for making mayo here). Set the aioli aside (I threw it in the fridge as my kitchen was warm that day…)

Now smash the spuds with either your palm or a coffee mug bottom; you don’t want to totally destroy the integrity of each potato, but create some cracks and tears and flatten them a bit. Drizzle with a couple of tbsp of avocado or olive oil, season generously with salt, and throw in the oven until crispy and golden brown in spots and especially along the edges (25-28 minutes, turn once).

Now to finish things up – combine the roasted spuds, the sausage mixture and half the aioli in a large bowl and stir to mix well. Spread the remaining aioli on a platter, top with the mixture in the bowl, sprinkle with the ancho chile powder and the chopped green onions.

Enjoy.

the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast: Grilled Rosemary Lamb Chops

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Like many of you, when thinking about the Easter table we often think of lamb or ham as the centerpiece protein; this year my lovely wife called for a Greek inspired meal featuring a perennial favorite – Grilled Rosemary Lamb Chops.

Last Easter’s Merguez Sausages were damned tasty, and I personally think this Ancho Leg of Lamb hung the moon, but lamb chops won the day this year.

Lamb chops are easy to source, quick to grill, and as always provide incredibly flavorful meat right off the bone. My only real complaint about them over the years has been that given that most lamb chops are cut fairly thick, sometimes there’s a bit more char outside after grilling given the time needed to make sure the deepest meat is a perfect medium rare.

This year I decided to sous vide the chops (130, 90 minutes) after rubbing with a bit of olive oil and a fresh cut garlic clove, with the chops then loaded into BPA-free bags with several sprigs of fresh rosemary.

A Quick Sidebar on Sous Vide and Texture…

As an aside, while we still use the sous vide method around our camp with some regularity, I am as I’m sure you are aware of a growing backlash against sous vide (nothing to do with the somewhat tired BPA discussion), but instead focusing on texture.

There are a number of talented chefs and home cooks who continue to report that they find proteins that spend time in a sous vide bath, while often cooked to perfection from a temperature / doneness perspective have a different texture than say thick-cut, bone-in ribeye cooked using a reverse sear technique. (Interesting my son Jake and I have had a very similar discussion a couple of different times this winter, and both find we’re leaning to the texture of the reverse sear method).

The other texture issue with sous vide has to do with pre-salting proteins before they’re placed in the water bath; some folks feel that doing so can make some proteins taste “rubbery and hammy”; there’s been a fair amount written on the subject, and we don’t salt red meats pre-sous vide, particularly if they’re going to be held for hours or a day or two before grilling, but still lightly salt chicken breasts for cold chicken salad (for example) before their time in the bath.

You make the call…

Back to Our Grilled Rosemary Lamb Chops

All the chops needed then was a quick turn on the grill to caramelize the surfaces and we were good to go, with this delightful Greek Salad, a recipe of homemade tzatziki, and crumbled feta on board.

These chops are delicious cold as well or heated gently prior to serving; cook a big batch when these come up in rotation.

Enjoy.

the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast: Quick Kung Pao Shrimp

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For the past several weeks we’ve been on somewhat of a stir fry kick; like many of you now and again we get stuck on a particular cuisine or preparation method and ride that horse for a few weeks just to change up the routine and menu.

My wife in particular has been craving some of the traditional Americanized Chinese food that we’ve eaten over the years; recently she’s been pestering me to craft a dish akin to a wonderful Kung Pao Shrimp we used to eat at a now defunct eatery in Salt Lake City back in the day.

It was spicy but not too hot, incredibly well balanced with the classic Chinkiang vinegar flavor followed by a just a hint of sweetness, and packed with tasty cashews and tender shrimp.

After a bit of trial and error, and digging around a bit, we’ve settled on this recipe using an incredibly easy homemade Kung Pao sauce (you can as always control the quality of your ingredients and cut back on the typical sugar/sweetener load), though a commercially prepared sauce could work in a pinch (read those ingredients!). By the way, I’ll post the recipe for the Kung Pao sauce down the road a few weeks from now…

With a minimum of prep, you can have this dish ready for the table in about twenty minutes, along with a big pile of steamed broccoli florets just like you’d receive in a classic restaurant setting.

As tempting as it is to throw in several handfuls of other vegetables, every time I’ve done that we (my wife especially) feel that the overall flavor impact of the dish is diminished by too many competing flavors. And it’s great over a spoonful of garlic cauliflower rice….

1 pound shrimp, prepped (peeled and deveined)
1 T Shaoxing wine
1 T cornstarch
1 tsp avocado oil
¼ t good salt

1 T avocado oil
6 green onions, white and green parts, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 bell pepper, ¾-inch dice
1/3 cup (perhaps a T or two more) homemade Kung Pao sauce
1/3 cup roasted cashews or peanuts

Combine the prepped shrimp, Shaoxing wine, cornstarch, and the salt; set aside for 10 minutes. Prep the vegetables and set aside.

Heat the oil in a large flat skillet until just smoking; add the shrimp in a single layer and cook for thirty seconds undisturbed, then stir occasionally for the next three minutes or so until the shrimp are just opaque.

Add the green onions and bell pepper, stirring to combine and heat the vegetables thoroughly. Now add the Kung Pao sauce, stirring to coat everything in the pan evenly.

Add the cashews (or peanuts), stir to distribute evenly, the remove from the heat and serve immediately.

Enjoy.

the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast: Loaded Huevos Rancheros

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Over the past couple of weeks we’ve posted a couple of great standalone recipes: this Tex Mex Chorizo (or our Chorizo No. 2) and this Ranchero Tomato Salsa (or sauce, pending what your intentions are).

Both recipes are packed from top to bottom with plenty of spice and deep flavor, are accessible to we mere mortals cooking at home from the standpoint of both ingredient list and skills required, and just taste damned good.

Several weeks ago I’d have been lying big time if I denied intending to at some point in the near future post a Friday Feast featuring what we’ve come to call Loaded Huevos Rancheros.

Both my lovely wife and grew up under the bright skies of the Lone Star state, and spent a fair amount of our youth and young adulthood wandering around other parts of the Southwest, mostly New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado, with a bit of Arizona thrown in for good measure.

While there are profound differences among these regions in terms of food culture (and lots of other things), one commonality you’d find almost everywhere was some form of huevos rancheros on the breakfast menu, if not available all day in the “better” eateries.

Nodding to more recent history, in the Ranchero Tomato Sauce/Salsa post last week I shared a bit about events that prompted the ultimate version of the recipe I shared –

… Two summers ago a friend came to me and asked me to help with menu planning an event he was hosting for his extended family around Father’s Day; as is typical for our North Texas neighborhood he was planning a big brisket and fixin’s barbecue one evening, but he also wanted to serve a brunch built around some of his Tex Mex favorites, including huevos rancheros.

My buddy was not only hell bent on serving a classic huevos rancheros, but he wanted it to match a particular dish he’d enjoyed on a hunting trip down in the Texas Rio Grande Valley in the months prior. He waxed poetically about a thick, tomatoey ranchero sauce, deeply flavored with dried peppers, and punctuated with a smokey, lingering heat that just had to be from chipotles.

My best advice was to call the little eatery he’d placed on this culinary pedestal to see if they’d share a recipe; he did, and lo and behold he reported the grandmother running the kitchen ran off a list from memory, though without the specific amounts of each ingredient, and she apparently said to use “some good spices” as well…

The “loaded” huevos concept isn’t mine; I think we first saw it on a menu in a little Tex Mex eatery outside of Port Isabel (on the way to South Padre from Harlingen), though you can find similar offerings just about anywhere these days.

The principle is simple: load your basic huevos rancheros recipe up with some tasty protein like chorizo (though well-spiced ground beef works here as well), mushrooms, peppers you have on hand (we prefer diced poblanos), a bit of diced onion, and whatever else floats your boat that day, and layer it atop your tortillas (gluten free if you prefer, we still reach for Siete’s products first), a bed of lettuce, or even a pile of sautéed, crispy sweet potatoes.

If I remember right, the version we had down in far South Texas featured crispy potatoes pieces as well, with eggs cooked enough to almost set the yolk so it runs down and bathes everything nearby when you take that first bite.

My wife typically won’t eat these unless there’s a pile of freshly sliced avocado or a big scoop of guacamole on the plate, along with some grated or crumbed cheese, and a dusting of finely chopped cilantro.

It’s time to get creative and crank these out for breakfast, brunch, or dinner this weekend…

the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast: Hasselback Chicken with Feta, Red Peppers, and Olives

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As we’ve moved into the New Year my wife and I had resolved to work harder to find a reasonably-priced source of pastured chicken; pasture raised chicken is a bit harder to find via our local farmers markets, and it’s often damned pricey when purchased via the biggest online purveyors.

We found a regional provider after digging around a bit (a full review is upcoming) and have of late been experimenting a bit with different ways to prepare chicken breasts, which as we call know, can be a bit dry and chewy if overcooked.

Don’t get me wrong, we love well-prepared chicken of all sorts, and have our favorite grilled chicken down to a perfected routine, and can get delectable results every time on the grill after a short sous vide par-cook.

That said, for most of us around the country, easy access to grilling outside doesn’t present itself often during the month of January, and I’ve been experimenting with a few new oven-roasted chicken recipes of late – including this Hasselback Chicken with Feta, Red Peppers, and Olives.

The “hasselback” trend is perhaps a bit long in the tooth these days, though I have to admit we still roast a fair amount of vegetables that way and still see it offered on menus here and there.

After playing around with some fairly classic roasted stuffed chicken breast recipes, Chef Libby in Austin recently mentioned that she’s been serving a Tex Mex version of today’s recipe (for another day here on the blog) for catering gigs in Austin, and the proverbial light bulb went off to try this one with feta, roasted red peppers, and good Kalamata olives.

The hasselback concept with chicken breasts allows you to add more flavorful stuffing “goodies” to each chicken breast and is a breeze to do – just don’t cut all the way through the breasts when you’re slicing each one.

These are great one their own, and we’ve served with a simple marinara-type sauce, tzatziki, and even a spicy Columbian guacamole at different times and it plays well every time. This recipe calls for roasting in the oven, though they’d be great on a Traeger type smoker or even grilled (over the low heat side of a two-zoned fire).

By the way, adding a couple of tablespoons of chopped roasted pine nuts to the feta mixture plays very well too.

6 boneless, skinless, free-range chicken breasts
3/4 cup crumbled full fat feta cheese
3/4 cup roasted red peppers, diced small
3/4 cup thinly sliced kalamata olives, divided
Good salt and pepper
1 tbsp good paprika
1/2 cup or more grated/shredded Mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup basil leaves, at least half in chiffonade

Fire the oven to 350, line a baking sheet with parchment.

Crumble the feta into a bowl, add the diced red peppers, and half the sliced olives; stir to combine and set aside.

Take each chicken breast and slice 6-8 slits across the breast (perpendicular to the long edge), roughly 3/4 of the way through the breast meat (don’t cut all the way through); your slices will be roughly 1/2-inch apart. Now stuff a bit of the feta mixture into each slit.

Place the stuffed chicken breasts on your baking sheet, generously season with good salt and freshly ground pepper, then dust with the paprika. Finally equally divide the shredded Mozzarella among the chicken breasts, sprinkling on top.

Bake the chicken for 20-22 minutes until firm and cooked through; you can optionally turn on the broiler for the final 2-3 minutes of the cook to brown the cheese further if you’d prefer.

Let rest for 2-3 minutes and serve hot, sprinkled with the remaining sliced olives and basil chiffonade.

Enjoy.