We made this chicken dish for the first time recently, and it was a delicious and elegant looking dish. I made a Kosher version a few days later with wine instead of chicken broth and a tofu-based sour cream instead of the dairy. It was good, but not as good as the original.
This recipe came from Rachel Ray’s 365: No Repeats.
(Adapted to make EVOO into a real word and stupid measurements like 3 super heaping tablespoons into 1/4 cup, what it would be since 3 normal tablespoon are slightly less than 1/4 cup)
Ingredients
4 6-ounce boneless, skinless chicken breast halves
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves
Juice of 1 lemon
salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
3/4 cup chicken stock or broth
1/4 cup dijon mustard
1/4 cup sour cream
Instructions
Season chicken with the thyme, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium high heat with the oil. Add the seasoned chicken breasts and cook for 5 to 6 minutes on each side, or until cooked through. Remove chicken from the pan and cover with foil (or the sauce is quick so it won’t get cold just sitting on a plate).
Turn up the heat on the skillet to high and add the chicken stock and mustard, whisking to combine. Bring up to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer for 3 minutes>
Whisk in the sour cream and continue to cook until slightly thickened, about 2 more minutes. Serve the sauce over the chicken.
Notes
This sauce is actually pretty thin–next time I might start with flour in the pan like a regular gravy (a roux!) to thicken it.
When we made this, we used reduced-fat sour cream and it was good. We typically buy fat-free sour cream which is thinner and has less flavor, I suspect it would work as well and just make the sauce a little less rich and maybe more soupy.
One last thing…
Do not use a metal whisk on your non-stick skillet. I mean, you can do that, but only if you don’t care about scratching the non-stick part off and ruining your pan and poisoning your family. Doesn’t Rachel Ray know that? A plastic or nylon whisk is a good investment, since it won’t scratch your pans and a whisk does get things combined better than just a spoon would.
Do you know there are lots of different kinds of whisks? For some reason, I do. There are French whisks, balloon whisks, roux whisks, gravy whisks, sauce whisks, ball whisks, twirl whisks, but at the end of the day, putting 2 forks together so the twines interlock and makes a cage works just fine too)
