On my last post, I showed you how to make a simple pan sauce at home with a link to my more detailed description and cooking tips for making delicious pan sauces. Today I want to show you how you can prepare three completely different pan sauces for the same chicken dish. It’s easy and a great example of the importance of learning a technique versus following a recipe. When you learn the cooking technique and you can come up with you own creative sauces. This is a real culinary school lesson for home cooks.

To Prepare the Chicken

• Your choice of boneless white or dark meat chicken, thicker pieces pounded to about 1/2 inch thick.
• Salt and pepper, to taste
• 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil, or a mixture of oil and softened butter.

Procedure

Heat a sauté pan over medium high heat until hot, about 3-5 minutes, depending on your stove.

Lightly salt and pepper the chicken pieces on both sides.

Add the oil, and then the butter, if using. Heat until the oil shimmers.

Place the chicken pieces in the pan, “prettiest” side down, leaving at least ½ inch between pieces. Let cook, adjusting the heat to achieve a fairly robust sizzle, for about 3-4 minute. Resist the temptation to poke at or move the chicken. Just let it cook.

Watch the meat as it cooks, and you will be able to see a ring of white travel up from the edges of the chicken as it sautés. Once the ring of cooked chicken appears to have cooked about half-way, turn the chicken with tongs. If it is “stuck,” don’t force it. The meat will release naturally once it has browned.

Wait another 30 seconds or so and try again. Make sure to keep adjusting the heat. You don’t want a lot of popping, just a robust sizzle and hiss.

Turn the meat and cook until the internal temperature is 160 F. Cooking the second side will take slightly less time, but do check the temperature with an instant read thermometer. It is the only truly reliable, safe way to make sure the meat is cooked to a safe internal temperature.

Remove from the heat and keep warm. Now it is time to build the pan sauce.

For Italian-Style Pan Sauce

• 1 clove garlic, minced
• Small spoonful of tomato paste, about 2 teaspoons
• ¼ teaspoon Italian seasoning
• ½ cup chicken stock (low sodium or homemade)
• ½ cup Chianti or other Italian red wine
• Salt and pepper, to taste
• tablespoon minced fresh basil and/or oregano
• Small splash of extra virgin olive oil, about 2 teaspoons

Over medium-high heat, in the pan you used to cook the chicken, sauté minced garlic until fragrant, about 30 seconds.

Stir in the tomato paste and Italian seasoning. Stir for just a few seconds.

Add the stock and wine, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan to dissolve the fond. Reduce liquid by about half.

Taste, and add a little salt and/or pepper if necessary. Reducing the sauce intensifies the saltiness, so don’t add any until you finish the reduction.

Remove from the heat and whisk in the herbs and extra virgin olive oil.

For French-Style Pan Sauce

• 1 tablespoon neutral oil
• ½ cup thinly sliced mushrooms
• 2 teaspoons minced shallot
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• ¼ teaspoon Herbes de Provence
• ½ cup chicken stock (homemade or low sodium)
• ½ cup dry white wine
• Salt and pepper, to taste
• 1 tablespoon chopped tarragon, thyme or marjoram
• Small pat of butter

Over medium-high heat, in the pan you used to cook the chicken, add the oil and sauté the mushrooms until they give up their liquid and then it evaporates.

Add the shallot and sauté until fragrant.

Add the Herbes de Provence and mustard and stir for a few seconds.

Pour in the stock and wine, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan to dissolve the fond. Reduce liquid by about half.

Taste, and add a little salt and/or pepper if necessary. Reducing the sauce intensifies the saltiness, so don’t add any until you finish the reduction.

Remove from the heat and whisk in the herbs and butter.

For Asian-Style Pan Sauce

• 1 tablespoon thinly sliced spring onions, white part only
• 1 clove minced garlic
• ¼ teaspoon red pepper flake
• ½ teaspoon minced fresh ginger (or to taste)
• ¼ teaspoon five spice powder
• ½ teaspoon fish sauce
• 1 tablespoon chunky peanut butter
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• ¾ cup chicken stock (homemade or low sodium)
• ¼ cup rice wine vinegar
• Soy sauce and white pepper, to taste
• 2 teaspoons sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon sliced spring onion, light green part
• 1 tablespoon crushed peanuts

Over medium-high heat, in the pan you used to cook the chicken, sauté onion, minced garlic, pepper flake and ginger until fragrant, about 30 seconds.

Stir in the five spice, fish sauce, peanut butter and brown sugar. Stir for just a few seconds.
Add the stock and vinegar, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan to dissolve the fond.
Reduce liquid by about half.

Taste, and add a soy sauce and white pepper. Reducing the sauce intensifies the saltiness, so don’t add any until you finish the reduction.

Remove from the heat and whisk in the spring onions, sesame oil and crushed peanuts.

How to Make a Simple Pan Sauce

Pan sauces sound mysterious, but they’re not.  They’re one pot cooking at its best!  No need to get another pot dirty; just use the one you cooked your meat in.  Pan sauces are generally intensely flavored, and since they are based on reduction, make sure you don’t add too much salt.  Here’s what you’ll need and how to do it.

Pan Sauce for 2 servings *

• Pan with fond from the meat you cooked that is now resting
• 1 tablespoon minced shallot or onion
• ¼ cup deglazing liquid, such as stock broth or wine
• ¼ cup secondary liquid to balance the deglazing liquid
• A bit of fat for mouth feel
• Minced complementary herbs

Preparation

1. While meat is resting, sauté shallots/onion in the fat left in the pan (add a bit of oil if there is no fat)
2. With the heat on high, pour in your deglazing liquid and stir up all the fond from the bottom of the pan.
3. Reduce by ½ - this will not take long - watch it carefully
4. Add the balancing liquid **  and reduce until thickened and syrupy
5. Taste and adjust seasonings if necessary.  You probably won’t need salt, but you might want to add some pepper.
6. Off the heat, swirl in a splash of heavy cream or a bit of butter.  This will give your sauce a lovely gloss and rich mouth feel.
7. Strain (if you want to) and add some minced herbs to finish

* Since these amounts are for only two servings, the deglazing and reduction will happen quickly.  To make more for a larger crowd, understand that it will take longer to reduce the sauce to the correct consistency.

** Examples of liquids that will balance each other (depending on the meat):  fruit juice and stock, wine and stock, cognac/brandy and stock, beer and stock…  Do you see a pattern developing?

More On Pan Sauces

For a more detailed look at pan sauces including a look at the right pan to use, how much liquid works best, classic pan sauces vs. quick pan sauces and a whole lot more, check out Making Incredible Pan Sauces at Home.

Related Topics

How to Deglaze

How to Make Reduction Sauces

The Secret to a Great Saute

Kids Can Cook Fettuccine with Simple Lobster Sauce

My nine year old helped me throw this one together. We had some cooked Maine lobsters leftover from the weekend and  wanted to use them in a dish everyone would eat. I was thinking Lobster Fra Diablo but wasn’t sure my girls would enjoy it so I came up with this simple alternative.

My nine year old Maddie has Cerebral Palsy so I try to find jobs she can handle safely and still feel like she is contributing. It’s not difficult at all. She helped me get ingredients from the refrigerator, grab the necessary cookware from the cabinets, cut herbs from the herb garden, pick lobster meat from the shells, stir the pasta and set the table. All I had to do was cut and cook.

If you want to read more about how teaching your kids to cook is a good thing, check out my blog series starting with Kids Can Cook. I also built a Squidoo lens on the same topic called Teaching Your Kids To Cook.

Fettuccine with Simple Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

3/4 pounds of fettuccine
1 medium onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, chopped fine
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups lobster stock*
2 cooked lobsters, meat from tail and legs removed and chopped into bite sized pieces
2 tablespoons fresh basil, finely chopped
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, finely chopped
2 tablespoons butter
salt and pepper, to taste

How to Make Fettuccine with Lobster Sauce

Start by bringing a big pot of water to boil. Add the pasta and cook until al dente.

Heat a medium sized saute (frying) pan until hot. Add oil and when it begins to shimmer, just before the smoking point, add the onions and cook for 3 minutes over medium high heat. Add the garlic and continue cooking until the onions become translucent. Do not let the garlic burn.

Add a quarter cup of the lobster stock to deglaze the pan. Add the lobster and the rest of the lobster stock. Continue cooking until the lobster stock is reduced by half or to your desired thickness.

Add the chopped basil and parsley. Mount the butter in pieces. Mounting is where you add butter to a sauce at the end to give it texture, flavor and a sheen. It is better to cut it up into smaller pieces and add one at a time while continuously stirring. You don’t want to add all the butter at once.

Taste the sauce and season with salt and pepper.

When the pasta is done, drain it and add it to the sauce, mix all together and serve.

*Lobster Stock - Not the easiest thing to find commercially and when in a hurry, not something you want to make. It is easy enough to make some decent stock with the shells and bodies of the lobster you are not using and here is a link to a lobster stock recipe but I used a product called Glace de Fruits de Mer Gold which is a fancy name for seafood stock but this stuff is more of a shellfish stock.  You can read more about it here at Lobster Stock.