Grilled French Toast with Bacon Wrapped Chicken
Good friends of mine just had a baby a few months ago, so I thought it would be a fun idea to go to their place and cook an early father’s day brunch for this first time dad. It turned out to be a beautiful morning, so I decided to take the whole brunch outside on the grill! My concept for the brunch was a twist on the super popular fried chicken and waffles. Instead of waffles, I did a brown sugar and bourbon French toast, and instead of fried chicken I wrapped it in bacon and grilled it! This was an amazing brunch and it was pretty easy to put together. This dish would have cost 25 dollars or more at your local hipster brunch spot.
Get some nice thick slices of bacon for this.
Wrap your chicken really tight and use toothpicks to keep it all secure. Once they start grilling, the bacon will shrink and seal onto the chicken.
Eggs, milk, bourbon, brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg make up the liquid for the French toast.
Pour your sauce over the bread and let it sit for an hour. Flip the bread after a half hour so they get nice and evenly coated. I used a nice hearty Italian bread for this so that it would stay firm on the grill.
My French toast is glistening in the sun and read for the grill.
The chicken takes about 25 minutes so start it well before the French toast. The French toast only needs about 12 minutes max.
Grilled French toast is something I had never thought of, and I don’t understand why! It came out sooo good with nice smokey flavors. The bourbon also helped enhance the smoke element.
Perfectly grilled.
Pop your chicken onto a slice of toast and load it up with syrup!
My friends loved this meal and also loved having some company to distract them from their new parenting responsibilities. It was a really nice morning and afternoon grilling, eating, and catching up.
The bacon and maple syrup really brought everything together.
It really did taste like the chicken and waffles that it was inspired by, but with a totally new flavor profile and direction!
Grilled French Toast with Bacon Wrapped Chicken
Ingredients
Toast
- 1 loaf Italian bread
- 8 eggs
- 1/4 cup bourbon
- 1/4 cup milk
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon nutmeg
Chicken
- 6 chicken breasts
- salt and pepper
- paprika, cumin, and oregano
- 12 slices thick cut bacon
- maple syrup
Instructions
French toast
- Slice the loaf into 6 hearty 2 inch slices. Arrange in a baking dish. Mix all the other toast ingredients together and whisk well. Pour over the bread and let soak for 1 hour, flipping half way through. By the end, most of the liquid should be soaked into the bread. Grill about 6 minutes a side to brown and cook through.
Chicken
- Remove the tenders from the chicken breasts if they are attached. Trim the chicken if necessary to make them all uniform size and manageable. Rub the chicken with salt, pepper, cumin, oregano, and paprika. Tightly wrap the bacon around the chicken, 2 slices per breast. Use skewers or toothpicks to secure the bacon. Grill the chicken to brown the bacon and fully cook the breasts.
Serve it up
- To serve, first plate the French toast, and top with the chicken. Smother with a good maple syrup.
Wow, that looks fantastic! Between you and me, I’d take french toast over waffles any day (and twice on Sundays….which it looks like you did.)