4 Strips Pepper Bacon (Meier’s is the best!)
4 Chicken Breasts – Boneless, Skinless
2 Bell Peppers
1/2 Sweet Onion (Large)
8 oz Mushrooms – White
1 Bag Monterey Jack Cheese – Shredded
4 Scallions (Green Onions)
Barbeque Sauce (a sweet and smokey variety)
Soy Sauce
Salt
Pepper (Coarse Ground)
Makin’ Bacon
Start the bacon, over a medium flame, in a large cast iron pan.
Start slicing your peppers and onion into medium width (think fajita) strips.
Pull the bacon at the very first sign of it crisping up (it will get crisp later in the oven).
Preheat the oven to 400*F.
Chicken
Pour the bacon grease into a measuring cup or other clean container (we’ll use this later, or substitute this with canola oil from here forward).
Salt and pepper the chicken on all sides.
Set heat to high, with just enough bacon grease in the pan to brown the chicken.
Brown the chicken breasts, about 3 minutes on each side.
Pull the chicken breasts off, placing them in a bowl with a plate on top of it to keep them warm.
Veggies
With the heat on high, add enough bacon grease to saute the veggies.
Let the grease come up to temp so that it is almost ready to smoke.
Add the veggies and mushrooms to the pan, salt and pepper.
Saute until the onion just starts to sweat, stirring them around, about 4 minutes (again, they’ll get finished off in the oven).
Mixing It Up
Add the chicken breasts and any juice from the bowl they were in back to the pan (I leave the heat on high during this just to keep things cooking).
Lay the bacon on top.
Add the soy sauce. You’ll want enough to kind of coat everything in the pan. It should be enough to just barely start to deglaze the pan. Probably 2-3
Tbsps.
Add enough BBQ sauce so that when it warms up and mixes in, everything will be covered. Probably 4 Tbsps.
Top the whole thing with cheese.
Pop the cast iron pan into the oven, uncovered (middle rack).
Let The Magic Happen
Set a time for 20 minutes.
Chop the green onions into around 1/4″ wide rings.
When 5 minutes are left on the timer, add the green onions on top of everything in the pan.
After the full 20 minutes, the cheese should be nice and melted and a little brown. If it has not browned, crank the heat up to 450*F for about 5 minutes.
Serve
I like to chop the chicken breasts up into manageable chunks while they are still in the cast iron pan. This lets the sauce coat all sides of the chunks.
