Recipe 34: Chicken Breasts Pierre

So after dabbling in fancy dishes with Salmon and Quinoa, I decided to once again go back the the old staple chicken.  I think that this is just about my last chicken dish that I made.... which seems unlikely given that I have made a lot.  I never knew there were so many ways to make chicken, before I attempted this new recipe every week thing.  In general, having a new way to make chicken was kind of a life saver since it was always easy and I could usually whip through it on days when I didn't want to attempt something massive.

For this dish I found something that sounded kind of exotic, but it also had really good reviews, so I figured I would try it.  Here is a picture of the final result.  The recipe doesn't call for it, but I served it on top of a bed of white rice since many reviewers recommended that.  I almost think that the tomato sauce mixed with the rice was my favorite part of this dish.

And here is the recipe that I used: (Link)

Ingredients

•      6 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
•     1/4 cup all-purpose flour
•     1/2 teaspoon salt
•     1 pinch ground black pepper
•     3 tablespoons butter
•     1 (14.5 ounce) can stewed tomatoes, with liquid
•     1/2 cup water
•     2 tablespoons brown sugar
•     2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
•     2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
•     1 teaspoon salt
•     2 teaspoons chili powder
•     1 teaspoon mustard powder
•     1/2 teaspoon celery seed
•     1 clove garlic, minced
•     1/8 teaspoon hot pepper sauce

Directions

1. In a shallow dish or bowl, combine flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt and ground black pepper. Coat chicken breasts with flour mixture. Melt butter in a large skillet over medium heat, and brown chicken on all sides. Remove from skillet, and drain on paper towels.
2. In the same skillet, combine the tomatoes, water, brown sugar, vinegar and Worcestershire sauce. Season with salt, chili powder, mustard, celery seed, garlic and hot pepper sauce. Bring to a boil; reduce heat, and return chicken to skillet. Cover, and simmer for 35 to 40 minutes, or until chicken is tender, no longer pink and juices run clear.

Changes

I made a few minor changes to this.  The first was just in how much I made, I only made four breasts.  The second is how I applied the flour mixture.  Sometime during this year I found that the best way to apply a flour or any coating to meat, especially to chicken, is to mix everything together in a ziploc bag and then drop the breast in and move it around inside the bag.  This is terrific and really easy. (Note: It feels odd to actually have a cooking tip to give out, even if it might be well known)

The final change was that I cooked up some white rice to serve with this.  I thought the rice complimented this dish really well and I would definitely recommend making it if you make this recipe.

The Process

So after coating the chicken in flour, I started to cook them in the skillet.  Since it is going to cook more with the sauce you don't want to cook them all the way through, simply brown it on all sides.

 This was hard for me to accept, but I figured the recipe knew best.  Here is the chicken after finishing on the skillet.

 I next started the sauce, shown below.

Once it was ready I added the chicken to the mixture.

I let it simmer and then moved on to the rice.  Sprinkles observed me from her perch at the top of the cabinets.

Soon the dish was ready, and the final result is below.

I really liked this dish.  It was pretty simple, but also very good.  The sauce on the rice was terrific and the chicken was good too.

Since I know what comes next, I will preview the future.  Things are about to get slightly higher scale.  Up to this point I had mostly been making things from allrecipes.com, which was good because for the most part the recipes are straightforward and easy enough for me to make.  But starting with the next recipe, I got the majority of my recipes from finecooking.com, which is sort of a step up from me.  It will be interesting to see how I fare...