Prosecco Herb Chicken

I’m a huge fan of skillet chicken in a pan sauce for quick weeknight meals. This sauteed chicken with an elegant cream sauce is one of my favorites. The only problem is that I have to make sure I have room in my macros for my husband and I to split the rest of the bottle of prosecco! Nobody wants that to go to waste, right?

Start off with two large or four small chicken breasts, about a pound of chicken in total. If you have two large ones, butterfly them into thin cutlets. Salt and pepper both sides to taste. Heat up a tablespoon each of olive oil and butter in a stainless steel or cast iron skillet over medium to medium high heat, making sure the oil doesn’t smoke. Don’t use a nonstick skillet here, as you won’t get the brown sticky bits on the bottom that make the sauce good. Alton Brown told me that those brown sticky bits are called fond. I must say I’m awfully fond of them. (Yeah, yeah, I know…)

Put the chicken into the skillet and saute for about 4-5 minutes a side, flipping once. You want the chicken to get nice and golden brown, like so:

While the chicken is cooking, chop the herbs. I grabbed a decent handful of both basil and tarragon leaves. Once chopped, it was about a half cup of herbs total. This one is fun to play with. If you don’t like the slightly anise flavor of tarragon, you can make it a bit more Italian-flavored instead of French by using basil, oregano, and parsley. As long as you have a half-cup of herbs total, you probably can’t go wrong. Unless you try cilantro, because that wouldn’t go well with the rest of the flavors at all. There’s a time and place for cilantro, and this isn’t it. Anyway, chop those herbs and save them for later.

Once the chicken is browned and fully cooked through, remove it from the pan and put it on a plate. Your skillet should look like this:

See all that brown crispy stuff on the bottom of the pan? That’s the start of something good. But first, we need to add some garlic. I view garlic like I view salt. I never really measure it. This is especially the case since I use the jarred kind, or jarlic, as I prefer to call it. I love fresh garlic, but it’s rare that I actually want to deal with the pain of peeling and chopping it. So throw about a tablespoon or so of minced garlic in there. I’d say 3 cloves if you’re using the real stuff. Toss it around in the skillet and make sure not to burn it. 30 seconds should be fine. After that, add 5 ounces of prosecco and a teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce to the mix. I get my prosecco from Costco. $7 a bottle!

Use your spatula to scrape up those brown bits on the bottom of the pan. That’s how the sauce gets the majority of its flavor. Bring it to a boil and let it reduce down until it looks kind of like this, then add the herbs and toss for about 30 seconds. You don’t want them to wilt too much or they’ll get to be an ugly color.

Whisk in 2-4 tablespoons of heavy cream and let the sauce boil just a bit, just to thicken it up. Add the chicken back to the pan, turn to coat, taste and adjust salt as needed, and then serve over cauliflower rice with more of the sauce drizzled on top. Enjoy an elegant meal that looks like something you could get in a restaurant but is easy enough to make on a weeknight!

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