Pillsbury Does it Again: Easy Buffalo Chicken Stromboli

After last blog's super sandwich fail, I was feeling a bit burned by online recipes. Luckily, all it took was this recipe from Pillsbury to rekindle the fire and remind me why I love trying new dishes; it is the pursuit of the fantastic dish that keeps me going.

This is my second dish from Pillsbury, the first one being "Taco Melts", which was also delicious. The recipe is called "Easy Buffalo Chicken Stromboli" and while I usually don't like Buffalo Chicken and especially not blue cheese, I decided to give it a try. (I also ended up making edits to create something more to my liking, so make sure to read below the recipe for those). This dish was scrumptious. It was a plate licker of a dish. It was one of those dishes that even though it hadn't cooled completely, my husband and I gobbled up in panting bites in a vain attempt to cool it down while inhaling it simultaneously. It was well worth it. Here's the recipe:

Mine

Pillsbury's take. Photo from www.pillsbury.com

INGREDIENTS

2 cans (8 oz each) Pillsbury® refrigerated crescent dinner rolls

(*I used the store brand, it was a 2 for 1 deal)

1 package (9 oz) frozen cooked chicken strips (about 2 cups), thawed, cut into 1/2-inch pieces

(*I used chicken breasts, cut them up, and then cooked them)

¼ cup buffalo wing sauce

¾ cup shredded mozzarella cheese (3 oz)

¼ cup crumbled blue cheese (1 oz)

1 medium green or red bell pepper, cut into thin bite-size strips (or use strips of both colors)

¼ cup finely chopped red onion

 Blue cheese dressing, if desired

DIRECTIONS

1 Heat oven to 350°F. Spray large cookie sheet with cooking spray. Unroll both cans of dough into 2 large rectangles on cookie sheet. Place rectangles with long sides together, forming 15x10-inch rectangle; press edges and perforations to seal.

2 In medium bowl, mix chicken and buffalo wing sauce. Spoon chicken mixture lengthwise in 4-inch-wide strip down center of dough to within 1 inch of short sides. Top with mozzarella and blue cheeses, bell pepper and onion.

3 Bring long sides of dough up over filling, overlapping 1 inch; firmly press center seam and with fork, press ends to seal.

4 Bake 30 to 40 minutes or until deep golden brown. Immediately remove from cookie sheet. Cut crosswise into slices; serve warm with salad dressing.

Pros: I don't usually make stromboli, so it was a nice diversion from our normal menu and it was super easy to make. It is also a great recipe for picky eaters because there is a lot of potential for variations. Don't like hot sauce? Don't use it. Use chicken instead of beef. Make it vegetarian. Lose the blue cheese. The possibilities are endless.Cons: I think if we had followed the recipe in to a T terms of assembling it (we didn't have a large enough cookie sheet to begin with) that it would have been really hard to construct. Revisions: Starting from the beginning. We didn't have frozen chicken so we used 3 chicken breasts that we had in the fridge, cut them up, and cooked them on the stove top. Then we put them in the fridge for a couple of minutes to cool them off. The important change: Since we did not have a big enough cookie sheet we used a can each to make two separate stromboli's. The first one we made with all the ingredients and folded the pastry up as noted. It was not an easy task and the pastry barely covered the mixture. For the second one we halved the pastry and put one half down as the bottom, then put on the ingredients sans blue cheese (I don't like blue cheese, I added more mozzarella instead), and then placed the other half of the pastry shell on top and folded it up. It was a lot easier to make and created the same final product.This is without a doubt a hall of fame recipe. It may not be the most amazing thing you'll ever eat, but it's pretty darn tasty and it is easy to make, which with a new full-time job, is something I value right up there with the quality of the dish. So, give it a try and let me know what twists you put on the dish!  *Serve with blue cheese dressing or ranch dressing (I'm sure you know which one I used!)