Skillet Chicken and Sauce

A while ago, PEter signed us up to be testers for America's Test Kitchen (publishers of Cook's Illustrated, our absolutely favorite cooking magazine). We've gotten recipes for a few weeks now, but life has either gotten in the way or the recipe just didn't sound exciting. Not so this week. Their recipe (which we are not supposed to cut and paste for you so we'll provide our "improvements") was for a skillet cooked chicken with a vermouth-dijon sauce. This sounded like something we'd actually eat and we added the ingredients to our grocery list today.

The recipe involves cooked chicken parts (with skin and bone) on the stove top and then making a sauce to serve on the side.

First you rinse and pat fry your chicken parts (Peter cut up our whole chicken because he's cool like that). Heat oil (a couple Tbsp) in skillet and add parts skin side down. Cook until browned WITHOUT TOUCHING. We suck at this part. Flip, add 1/4 cup H2O and cover until cooked (155 for white, 170 for dark). Once each piece is done, pull it to a plate. Once all the pieces are cooked, drain your pan completely of all H2O and oil (don't wipe the pan). Add the parts back and crank the heat so that the skin recrisps. Cook them until crispy (another 3 minutes or so). Then, pull them and tent with foil.

Now it's time fo the pan sauce. We could barely restrain ourselves, this sauce tasted so good. So even if you don't want to make the chicken, you REALLY need to make this sauce. So, drain your pan again, and add the shallot (1 shallot minced). Cook until shallot is nice and wilty. Then, add the broth, (1/2-3/4 cup), vermouth (use dry or extra dry, 1/2 cup or so), dijon mustard (a Tbsp) and cook at high until it reduces by at least half. Once the sauce has thickened, remove from heat, stir in the drippings from the chicken, stir in 2 Tbsp butter and a few Tbsp chopped parsley.

Serve chicken with sauce poured around it (if you pour the sauce over the chicken, you'll make the skin soggy again).

We served this with rice pilaf and broiled broccoli.

If you do nothing else- MAKE THE SAUCE!!! YUMMMMMMMM


Notes and Next Time

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Ingredients/Recipe

• whole chicken cut up or chicken parts (with bones and skin)
• veg oil
• S & P
• dijon mustard
• vermouth
• chicken broth
• parsley, chopped
• shallot, minced
• butter

What We're Eating - About Us

What We're Eating is a group discussion about food, cooking, and eating. We love to cook and talk about food, wine, and other gastronomic topics. But most importantly, we like to eat: good food, bad food (I'm looking at you corn dog), new food, weird food, pretty much anything.

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Some Notes on our Shorthand Symbols

#: pounds. We don't distinguish between by-weight or by-volume, although I guess we probably should, especially in baking.

T: Tablespoon

t: teaspoon

c: cup

evoo: Extra Virgin Olive Oil. I use this a lot, almost exclusively. Until a few years ago, I didn't know there was any other kind of oil.

Temperatures will always be in Fahrenheit, since we live in the US, and we will generally not specify the word degrees; if it's a 3-digit number, it's probably an oven or internal meat temperature.