Chicken with Mushroom Cream Sauce

Lets get this started with a real food post. I have been trying a lot of new recipes since I have been a stay at home dad - a lot of them scrounged from different places on the web. This one is from the Simply Recipes blog.

The recipe is pretty simple. You start with a pretty standard pan fried chicken. You then put the chicken into a roasting pan and pour some broth over it and stick it in the oven for 40-50 minutes. I think the oven time is only so you have time to make the pan sauce - otherwise it would be good if the chicken was just cooked in the pan. I did make a modification to the recipe since 40-50 minutes sounded awfully long after being cooked on top of the stove. Perhaps I browned on top of the stove longer than the recipe intended, but my chicken was done at 25-30 minutes.

The recipe also mentioned using a rich chicken broth over the chicken - even describing how to make one quickly with the giblets. I normally do have some homemade chicken broth around but I am currently out. I used some low-sodium canned broth. I would not use canned broth where it is the major component of a recipe but in this recipe I hardly think it mattered.

The pan sauce was nice and easy. You save 2 Tablespoons oil from cooking the chicken and fry up some onions, garlic, and mushrooms. Then add sour cream and cream. I made a few changes here as well. The recipe has you remove your garlic at the end. I just ran my garlic through a press and there is no need to remove it at the end. I also did not have cream but used half & half instead. I was still plenty rich and creamy - I think you could probably even use milk with good results to save a few more calories.

The final results were very good. The sauce was very flavorful and rich. The recipe makes a lot of sauce so make sure to serve with potatoes or noodles or something. We had it with mashed potatoes.

I just made Beef Stroganoff the other day and my wife Lara wanted it without sour cream. She is not real adventurous with food so recipes can be difficult to adapt at times. I made her try some with sour cream but she thought it was too "tangy". With this recipe I decided to make it with the sour cream and not tell her (is that wrong?). Well she took seconds of both the chicken and mashed potatoes and put sauce on both. She said the sauce was really good. When I asked her if the sauce was too "tangy", I think she got the hint - the sauce is 50% sour cream.

Chicken with Mushroom Cream Sauce
(Source: Simple Recipes)

Ingredients

• 1 5-pound roasting chicken, cut into serving pieces (bone-in, skin on)
• Flour, salt and pepper
• 1 cup grapeseed oil, or canola oil (or other high smoke point oil)
• Butter
• 1/4 cup rich chicken broth
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1/2 pound fresh mushrooms, sliced
• 1 clove of garlic, crushed
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• Salt and pepper

Method

1. Put a cup of flour, a teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of pepper in a brown paper bag. Piece by piece, put a piece of chicken in the bag and shake to coat the chicken with flour mixture.
2. Preheat the oven to 350°F. On the stove top, in a large frying pan, heat oil to medium high heat. Place the chicken pieces in the pan. Watch the oil carefully, you don't want the oil to be so hot as to burn the chicken, you just want to lightly brown it. Brown the chicken pieces on all sides, turning when necessary.
3. Butter a roasting pan generously. Arrange the chicken pieces in it, pour broth over it, and bake at 350°F until the chicken is tender and cooked, about 40-50 minutes for pieces from a 5-pound chicken. (See my note above 40-50 minutes may be too long). You know that the chicken is done by poking a thigh with a meat fork (the thigh meat is dark meat and takes longer to cook than white breast meat). If pink or red juice runs out of the hole made by the fork, the chicken is not done. If only clear juice runs out, the chicken is done.
4. About 20 minutes before the chicken is expected to be done, start cooking the onions and mushrooms. In the same frying pan as was used to cook the chicken, empty the pan of all but 2 Tbsp of oil. Add the onions to the pan and saute on medium heat until softened. Add the crushed garlic clove and the mushrooms and cook until mushrooms are no longer crisp. Remove and discard the garlic, and add the sour cream and the heavy cream to the onions and mushrooms. Lower the heat. Keep warm, but do not boil. Salt and pepper to taste.
5. When the chicken is done, remove from oven. Serve on a platter with the mushroom sauce spooned over it, or served on the side.

Serves 6 to 8.

Serve with noodles, rice, or Spanish rice.