Pan-Seared Chicken Breasts with Browned Butter Sauce
By Cecelia JenkinsPublished on June 12, 2020
Time
45 minutes
Yield
Serves 4
Ingredients
Before You Begin
This recipe calls for a stainless-steel skillet, which makes it easier to see the butter browning. If you can't tell the color of the butter through the foam in step 4, quickly spoon some onto a white plate. Once the lemon juice is added, much of the fond on the bottom of the skillet will incorporate into the butter and color it further.
Instructions
- Sandwich chicken between 2 sheets of plastic wrap on cutting board. Using meat pounder, gently pound thickest part of each breast to ¾-inch thickness to match thin part of breast. Pat chicken dry with paper towels and sprinkle with 1 teaspoon salt and pepper.
- Place flour in shallow dish. Dredge chicken in flour to coat both sides, shake off excess, and transfer to plate. Heat oil in 12-inch skillet over medium heat until just smoking. Add chicken, smooth side down. Cover and cook until light golden brown on first side, about 8 minutes.
- Flip chicken and continue to cook, uncovered, until registering 160 degrees, about 4 minutes longer. Using metal spatula, loosen chicken if stuck to skillet and transfer to cutting board. Tent with aluminum foil and let rest for 10 minutes.
- Meanwhile, melt butter in now-empty skillet over medium heat. Add capers and cook, swirling skillet and scraping skillet bottom occasionally with wooden spoon, until milk solids in butter are color of milk chocolate and have toasty aroma, 3 to 5 minutes (it's OK if skillet bottom is very browned and bits don't release when scraped).
- Immediately remove skillet from heat and stir in lemon juice, scraping up browned bits. Stir in 2 tablespoons chives and remaining ¼ teaspoon salt.
- Slice chicken and transfer to serving platter. Spoon sauce over chicken and sprinkle with remaining 1 tablespoon chives. Serve.
Time
45 minutesYield
Serves 4Ingredients
Test Kitchen Techniques
Ingredients
Test Kitchen Techniques
Ingredients
Test Kitchen Techniques
Why This Recipe Works
Sautéed chicken breasts coated in a lemony browned butter sauce studded with capers make for an easy, intensely flavorful weeknight meal. We started with a light-colored conventional skillet so that we could observe the changing color of the butter as it browned. To evenly cook the boneless, skinless chicken breasts, we pounded the thicker parts to match the thinner tapered ends. Then we dredged them lightly in flour and cooked them covered for part of the time so that they didn't turn tough on the exterior or dry out. After removing the chicken and setting it aside to let it rest, we melted butter in the same skillet and then added the capers so that they turned meaty and less bracingly briny. Swirling and scraping the pan occasionally ensured even browning, and when the milk solids in the butter turned a nutty-flavored milk-chocolate brown, we removed the skillet from the heat and added a splash of lemon juice to abruptly halt cooking and to release the flavorful browned bits stuck to the pan bottom back into the sauce.
Before You Begin
This recipe calls for a stainless-steel skillet, which makes it easier to see the butter browning. If you can't tell the color of the butter through the foam in step 4, quickly spoon some onto a white plate. Once the lemon juice is added, much of the fond on the bottom of the skillet will incorporate into the butter and color it further.
Instructions
- Sandwich chicken between 2 sheets of plastic wrap on cutting board. Using meat pounder, gently pound thickest part of each breast to ¾-inch thickness to match thin part of breast. Pat chicken dry with paper towels and sprinkle with 1 teaspoon salt and pepper.
- Place flour in shallow dish. Dredge chicken in flour to coat both sides, shake off excess, and transfer to plate. Heat oil in 12-inch skillet over medium heat until just smoking. Add chicken, smooth side down. Cover and cook until light golden brown on first side, about 8 minutes.
- Flip chicken and continue to cook, uncovered, until registering 160 degrees, about 4 minutes longer. Using metal spatula, loosen chicken if stuck to skillet and transfer to cutting board. Tent with aluminum foil and let rest for 10 minutes.
- Meanwhile, melt butter in now-empty skillet over medium heat. Add capers and cook, swirling skillet and scraping skillet bottom occasionally with wooden spoon, until milk solids in butter are color of milk chocolate and have toasty aroma, 3 to 5 minutes (it's OK if skillet bottom is very browned and bits don't release when scraped).
- Immediately remove skillet from heat and stir in lemon juice, scraping up browned bits. Stir in 2 tablespoons chives and remaining ¼ teaspoon salt.
- Slice chicken and transfer to serving platter. Spoon sauce over chicken and sprinkle with remaining 1 tablespoon chives. Serve.
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