Pesto Chicken Pillows

These quick and easy Pesto Chicken Pillows are made with croissant dough, shredded chicken, mozzarella, and pesto. It’s the fanciest dinner you will ever make, with the least amount of effort!

Sometimes you want to make a super fancy dinner, but you don’t want to take a long time or make a ton of dirty dishes. Or maybe you don’t care about dinner being super fancy. You just want to get it done quickly. Well, I have just the ticket for you today with these Pesto Chicken Pillows.

All you need are four ingredients: cooked, shredded chicken, pesto, shredded mozzarella cheese, and croissant dough.

I get most of my ingredients from Costco. They have bottles of pesto and bags of shredded mozzarella cheese. (If you want to make your own pesto, you can use my recipe here). You can use a rotisserie chicken for the chicken meat as well, if you are a rotisserie chicken kind of person. Not that you’re a chicken 🙂 I personally just bake chicken breasts and shred them myself. You will also need croissant dough. My Costco doesn’t have this, but you can find this dough in the refrigerated section of any supermarket. It’s often in the same general area as the cheese, juice, and yogurt.

The first thing you will do is get a medium-sized mixing bowl and just mix your chicken, pesto, and cheese together.

Then you’ll grab two cans of croissant dough and pop them open. Once you open the cans, unroll the dough and put it down on a cutting board. Instead of separating the dough into triangles, leave it in rectangles, and press the perforations together.

Spoon about 1/4 cup (give or take) of your chicken/pesto/mozzarella mixture onto each rectangle.

Then just fold the corners up over the middle, one by one.

For the last flap, you may need to stretch it around so that it covers everything and there are no holes.

Then you just place the chicken balls onto an un-greased cookie sheet. If you want, you can brush them with some olive oil and sprinkle on some Italian seasoning.

A quick 12-15-minute trip in a 375-degree oven is all it takes to finish these magical, delightful balls of pesto, chicken, and cheese.

Look at that flaky, tender croissant with the yummy chicken pesto mix.

To re-heat any leftovers, I will pop these in the microwave for about 20 seconds, and then put them in a 350-degree toaster oven for about 5 minutes. I just like for my croissant to stay a little crispy, which is why I finish re-heating it in the oven.

The next time you’ve got dinner guests, whip up some of these Chicken Pesto Pillows for an unexpected, super delicious main dish.

This recipe was first shared on Julie’s Eats and Treats where I am a contributor.

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Pesto Chicken Pillows

Author: Melissa Howell

Ingredients

• 2-3 cups cooked shredded chicken
• 1/2 cup pesto
• 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
• 2 cans uncooked crescent rolls

Instructions

1. Mix the shredded chicken, pesto and cheese together in medium-sized mixing bowl.
2. Open the cans of crescent rolls and separate the dough into large rectangles. Press the perforated edges together.
3. Spoon about 1/4 cup of the chicken mixture into the center of each rectangle.
4. Fold the dough over the top of the chicken mixture, one corner at a time, until the mixture is well-covered and there are no holes. Stretch the dough as necessary.
5. Place the chicken balls onto an un-greased cookie sheet. Brush with olive oil and sprinkle with Italian seasoning if desired.
6. Bake at 375 degrees for 12-15 minutes, until the tops of the chicken balls are golden brown.