Another go-to chicken breast recipe

Simple country-inspired seasoning tossed with the tiniest amount of flour so the chicken gets a lovely crust on it, served with a butter sauce made in the same pan so it gets flavour from the residual seasoning.

Mix and match magic: Skip the sauce and just serve the seasoned chicken, or skip the spices and let the butter sauce shine with a simple salt-and-pepper seared chicken.

Prep Time5minutes mins Cook Time7minutes mins

Course: Mains Cuisine: Western

Keyword: chicken breast recipe, chicken in white wine butter sauce, pan seared chicken breast

Servings: 4

Author: Nagi

Ingredients

• 2 large chicken breasts (250 – 300g/8 – 10 oz each), each cut in half horizontally to form 4 steaks, no need to pound (Note 1)
• 30g/ 2 tbsp unsalted butter or 1 1/2 tbsp olive oil

Savoury Seasoned Crust:

• 1 tsp paprika , regular/sweet (or smoky)
• 1/2 tsp onion powder (or more garlic)
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder (or more onion)
• 1/4 tsp cumin (sub coriander, thyme leaves crushed between fingers, or omit)
• 3/4 tsp cooking salt / kosher salt (halve for table salt, +50% for flakes)
• 1/8 tsp black pepper
• 1 1/2 tbsp flour , plain/all-purpose, GF (Note 2)

Butter sauce:

• 1/3 cup dry white wine or chicken stock (low sodium), sub water (Note 3)
• 30g/ 2 tbsp unsalted butter
• 1 tbsp roughly chopped parsley , optional but recommended

Instructions

• Season – Mix the Seasoning ingredients in a bowl. Sprinkle on each side of the chicken, spreading with fingertips to coat evenly, then shake off excess.
• Sear – Melt the butter in a large non-stick pan over high heat. Cook chicken for 2 1/2 minutes on each side until deep golden, or until the internal temperature reaches 67C/153F. Remove onto a plate.
• Pan sauce – Lower then heat to medium high. Add the wine and simmer rapidly for 1 – 1 1/2 minutes, scraping the pan with a rubber spatula to loosen the golden bits into the sauce, until it’s reduced by half. Add the butter and let it melt, mixing well to combine. (Note 4 on sauce amount)
• Serve – Serve chicken with sauce and sprinkled with parsley. Enjoy!

Notes

To double the recipe, use 2 separate pans, if you try to cook the chicken in 2 batches the precious fond in the pan will burn during the second batch (don’t even think about wiping that flavour away! 🙂 )

1. Chicken – This recipe will also work with boneless chicken thighs. Just increase the cooking time to cook the chicken through.

2. Flour creates a lovely light crispy crust and also creates a surface that the sauce clings to. Regular plain/all-purpose flour works best (gluten-free flour is fine too), or bread flour, self raising flour. Cornflour / cornstarch is a good substitute.

3. Wine – Any dry white wine is fine here, just avoid anything too sweet or too oaky. My default I always have on hand is Chardonnay. Don’t waste expensive wine on this, I get heavily discounted end of bin bottles.

Flat bubbles is also great – never waste leftover champers! 

4. Sauce amount – There’s not a stack of sauce, which is the way it is with quick pan sauces like this. What it makes up for in volume you get in flavour. 🙂

Leftovers will keep for 3 days in the fridge, or freezer for 3 months (though not the best, chicken surface gets soggy).

Nutrition calculator is broken at the moment, will update when it’s up and running again!