April 11, 2026 Grilled Stuffed Chicken Breasts
The weather forecast says that the only really grillable days this week are today and tomorrow, so we’re grilling on both of them! Today’s dinner is prosciutto wrapped, stuffed chicken breasts.
The mise en place. With only 5 ingredients, they all have to be perfect. We got the idea for this from America’s Test Kitchen’s Charcoal-Grilled Stuffed Chicken Breasts with Prosciutto and Fontina. We weren’t that happy with that recipe, so we changed to a really good mozzeralled-Fontina cheese blend and from tarragon to sage. Part of the inspiration for switching to sage was saltimbocca. The tarragon is too delicate to stand up to the heat and fontina. The sage worked much better.
The cheeses come from Cheese Importers. They put their own label on the Fontina, indicating its one of their favorite cheeses. We’ve never disagreed with them 😉!
We don’t really have a recipe, per say, we just stuff as much cheese and sage as the particular breast will hold and use 2-3 slices of proscuitto per breast, depending on the size of the breasts and the proscuitto slices.
Some of the assembly, with quality control on the job! Note that those pockets, as big as they look, were still too conservative. There was too much chicken with no stuffing 🙁. These sage leaves have had the tough central rib removed and since they’re fairly small, a lot of them were needed.
Here they are, ready for the grill! Notice that we’re grilling them in a fish basket. This works even better than tying them with kitchen twine and is a whole lot easier. Plus Bill, the gill master, can flip all 3 over at once.
There are 3 of them because we’re getting two meals out of this production.
Here’s a look at Martin’s half breast. The middle one above, was so large that Martin’s dinners will be half of it. This shows that the pocket just wasn’t big enough.
The prosciutto wrapping produces an absolutely amazingly juicy chicken breast!
Tonight’s wine is the the Domaine Ott Château
de Selle, 2023. It is a Grenache, Cinsault, Syrah, Mourvèdre blend and went perfectly with the chicken. It’s a really bright, delicate wine that somehow held its own against the smoke. Wine Spectator didn’t rate the 2023 vintage, but Ott’s wines, even though Wine Spectator doesn’t like rosés, still rates it very highly.
Livingstone really likes the Whole Foods Buttermilk biscuits. These used to be available only in Christmas season. Then Martin and a whole bunch of other customers wrote in asking for them to be available all year and they are now! Not all the time, but occasionaly throughout the year.
Livingstone really likes the fatty parts of the prosciutto, he’s an aviator and needs top grade fuel 😉!