Cream Cheese Chicken Croissants -

Here’s the Recipe

Serves: 8

Prep time: 30 minutes to 1 hour (depends on if you choose to let the mixture chill or not)

Cook time: 30 minutes

Total time: 1 hour to 1 1/2 hours

Ingredients:

2 large chicken breasts (or 4 cutlets) cut into bite sized pieces

1 block softened cream cheese

2 containers of crescent roll dough

2 tablespoons olive oil

Salt to taste

Pepper to taste

Favorite meat seasoning to taste (I either use Kinder’s or Goya, whatever I have on hand)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare a large baking sheet by spraying it with non-stick cooking spray and set aside.
Heat up olive oil in a large skillet over medium high heat.
Season the raw, bite sized chicken with salt, pepper, and your favorite meat seasoning.
Once the pan is heated, add the chicken and cook through. We are looking for a good sear here so the pan should be pretty hot. Once the chicken is cooked, let it cool slightly.
Meanwhile, breakdown the block cream cheese in a bowl. Once the chicken is cooled enough, add it to the cream cheese and stir. Optional: Once the chicken is mixed through, put the bowl in the fridge for at least 30 minutes for it to set (I prefer to do this, but you don’t have to if you are crunched on time).
While the chicken is in the fridge cooling, open up the crescent roll dough. Take 2 triangles and lay them with the seam touching each other to make a sealed rectangle. Press the dough together at the seam on both sides. Do this with all of the crescent dough. You should end up with 8 rectangles. Place them on the baking sheet.
Take the chicken and cream cheese mixture and place a spoonful into the center of each of the rectangles. Then take the corners of the dough and bring it up to the top and pinch together. The chicken and cream cheese mixture should be completely covered with the dough once you pinch it together. They should be about 2 inches apart on the baking sheet once formed.
Bake in the oven for 30 minutes.
Serve with my Easy Steamed White Rice or Easy Baked Crispy Potatoes or veggie of your choosing. Enjoy!

Notes:

To make this even easier, you can sub out the raw chicken entirely and get cooked, frozen chicken fajitas. All you need to do is thaw the chicken and cut it into smaller pieces that are bite sized. These are already seasoned too so you can skip the seasoning step. This literally takes out steps 2-4. Just mix it with the cream cheese, fill the dough, and bake!
To freeze: Once cooled, wrap each croissant individually in tin foil and freeze in a ziplock bag. You can pull them out and either defrost them and then heat them up or warm them up from the freezer like you would hot pockets. Super easy on-the-go meal.

Inspiration:

I love this recipe! This recipe was given to me by my mom and is something that my family loves! This is only a 7 ingredient dish if you include the salt and pepper. Without the salt and pepper, it’s only 5 ingredients! It looks fancy and elegant but it really isn’t. It can be thrown together quickly too if you are in a pinch. These are the recipes I live for.

I remember my mom making this for us growing up and she always made it for special occasions. It felt fancy growing up but once I learned how to make it, I was like wow, this is so easy and not at all fancy. And there are shortcuts and it is freezer friendly! What could make this recipe any better?

Well, you can literally make this any flavor profile you want! I keep it simple usually (hubby likes simple), but there are ways you can change it up. I have made a buffalo chicken version of this and it turned out incredible. You can also add carrots and peas for a riff on chicken pot pie or just add some spinach or kale to get your greens in. It is really that versatile and simple. Check out the notes at the end for tips and substitutions to make this even easier!

I’m telling you, once you try this, it will be a go-to dish at your table and your whole family will love it.