Chicken with pineapple and cheese in the oven is the perfect dish for any special occasion. The ingredients for it will require a minimum, you won’t have to bother for a long time, and the taste will turn out to be gentle and piquant. And outwardly such a dish looks very festive and elegant.
Cooking fillets
Chicken recipes are very diverse, but adding pineapple to this tender meat always gives a certain exoticism and piquancy. Chicken with pineapple and cheese in the oven is cooked quickly enough, and it will take very little time to prepare all the products beforehand.
First, take chicken fillet weighing about 700-800 grams. We thoroughly rinse it, dry it with a paper towel or let it drain in water, and then cut the carcasses across not very wide layers, removing the films and veins.
Then we pick up a kitchen hammer and beat the meat from two sides. Salt, pepper, add spices and send to the refrigerator for 20 minutes for marinating. Then the meat is perfectly saturated and will be juicy.
Fresh or canned?
The question of what tastes better - chicken with canned pineapples or with fresh does not have a clear answer. After all, they don’t argue about tastes. If you cook a dish with fresh fruit, it will give more acidity, and the pineapple itself can be cut both lengthwise and across, as soon as your imagination tells you.
But if there is no fresh pineapple at hand, conservation will come to the rescue. Now in stores there is a fairly large selection of this fruit: cut into rings, semicircles and slices. If for cooking you take canned pineapple, then you need to throw it in a colander so that the juice is stacked, which you can safely drink later.
Two options for one dish
Chicken with pineapple and cheese in the oven can be cooked in two ways. The first is when we spread all the ingredients at once. So, carefully pickled chicken meat we put on a baking sheet which is previously greased with vegetable oil. On top of each piece of meat - a piece of pineapple. Sprinkle all this beauty with grated cheese (200 grams of hard cheese will be enough for 700 grams of chicken fillet). Those who like a fatter dish can put a couple of spoons of mayonnaise on top. However, without this sauce, the dish will turn out to be quite soft and juicy. Bake in the oven for about half an hour. The cheese spreads, and you get a single meat pie with pineapples.
If you cook according to the second method, then first you need to bake the chicken fillet in the oven separately - 15 minutes on one side and 10 on the other. Then we transfer each piece to a different baking sheet, cover the meat with a pineapple ring, sprinkle with cheese and send it to the oven for another 7 minutes. The advantages of the second method are that with this preparation each piece lies separately, in portions, it is more convenient to remove it from the pan and , respectively, serve. And since pineapple was cooked for very little time, it will be almost like fresh.
This dish can be cooked on the so-called onion base. 3-4 medium onions cut into rings and spread them on a baking sheet. Above are the main ingredients. If you are afraid that the dish will burn, you can put aluminum foil or oiled paper on a baking sheet.
In the food sleeve
But simply amazingly juicy chicken with pineapple and cheese in the oven, which is cooked using a food sleeve. We need about 900 grams of chicken, which we pre-cut into large pieces. But for this recipe, you can take wings and a drumstick. Add salt and pepper, add dry spices. Pineapple is better to take fresh - enough for such a volume of grams is 500-600 grams of exotic fruit. Also cut it into slices, mix with chicken. Add the grated cheese.
We lay out all this mixture in a sleeve, seal it on both sides, leaving enough space for air, and send it to the oven for 30-40 minutes. The meat is perfectly soaked in juice and melted cheese, will get a golden crust and extraordinary juiciness!
We put lettuce leaves on a large dish , and on them is a finished dish. For decoration, you can use cherry tomatoes, olives or olives, greens. For garnish, you can boil potatoes or rice, pasta or buckwheat.
What is the time to bake?
How quickly is the chicken cooked, how much is it baked in the oven? It all depends on the size of the pieces of meat and on your desire to get a crispy crust on the dish or, conversely, darken the chicken so that it is well stewed. The larger the chicken pieces, the longer the baking time will take. If you do not beat the chicken, and put it on a whole baking sheet, then the cooking time will take about 40-50 minutes at a temperature of 200 degrees.
If the meat is cut into thinner layers and well beaten, half an hour will be enough. If you want to get a crisp, then immediately turn on a big fire, at 250 degrees, and put the pan in a preheated oven. After 10 minutes, the fire must be reduced to 180 degrees and for another 20-30 minutes, bring the dish to readiness. Then allow the dish to cool - it is enough to stand for 10 minutes in the kitchen. And after that, you can immediately serve.
Spicy salad
Chicken recipes suggest not only hot serving, but also cold snacks in the form of salads. If you want to make a spicy dish, you will need the following ingredients: chicken, pineapple, cheese, garlic and mayonnaise. Boil chicken fillet (take 500 grams) in salt water (later this broth can be used to prepare first courses). Let the meat cool and cut it into small pieces (about 3 by 3 centimeters in size). Add chopped pineapples to the meat (200 grams). We rub the same amount of hard cheese on a grater and add 3-4 cloves of finely chopped garlic to it. We mix all the ingredients and season the salad with mayonnaise. We spread this beauty in a deep vase and put in the refrigerator for half an hour.
Before serving, you can put several pineapple rings on top of the salad - this will decorate the dish. Also, the salad can be sprinkled with pine nuts or grated walnuts. Leaves of basil, cilantro, parsley are perfect as decorations.