If I had to name one food item I can’t live without, it would be shallots. Dried pasta is a close second, but as long as I have a few shallots on hand, I can usually pull together something tasty. They are essential to a zesty vinaigrette, savory gravy, simple pasta, and so much more.
Whenever someone questions the abundance of shallots in my pantry, I always try to explain that the flavor is unlike anything else. It’s the type of ingredient that just makes everything better. Shallots are what make restaurant food taste like restaurant food. During my culinary school days, almost every single lesson started with prep work, and shallots were always top of the list—finely minced, of course.
I’ve never met an Ina Garten chicken recipe I didn’t like, so when I came across her Chicken with Shallots, I knew I had to try it. Like another one of my favorite Ina chicken recipes, she calls for boneless, skin-on chicken breasts. In this economy, and with the current chicken scarcity, that was not happening for me, so I used boneless, skinless chicken breasts instead.
Simply Recipes / Molly Adams
How I Make Ina’s Chicken with Shallots
I worked around the lack of skin by making sure the chicken breasts were super dry before adding them to the pan, so I still got a beautiful brown sear. I also quickly pounded the chicken breast with a meat mallet to tenderize it slightly and to ensure the chicken was even in thickness.
Now, in Ina we trust… except when we can use less dishes. While the recipe instructs you to make the chicken and sauce in separate pans, I adapted this to use one skillet. Not only does this save time cleaning up, but it also allows you to incorporate all of the delicious brown bits (i.e., flavor!) from the seared chicken into the sauce.
After searing the chicken, you finish cooking it in the oven, which took about 12 minutes at 425°F. Once cooked, I removed the chicken from the oven and let it rest while I prepared the sauce. I poured off any oil remaining in the pan and added a pat of butter, then the shallots. I let this sweat over low heat just to take the raw edge off the shallots and coax out some of their sweetness.
During this process, I used a wooden spoon to scrape all the tasty brown bits into the sauce. After about three minutes of sweating the shallots, I proceeded with the recipe as written by adding white wine and lemon juice and letting it reduce.
When the sauce was nice and thick, I added a splash of heavy cream and let it simmer until it coated the back of a spoon. Then, I removed the pan from the heat and swirled in room temperature butter to finish the sauce. It’s key that the butter is room temperature; if you add cold butter, the sauce will break and get a little greasy.
The resulting chicken was truly delicious. It was hard for me to believe it was chicken breast; it had the flavor and texture of a succulent roasted chicken. Plus, the decadent sauce felt like something you’d get at a restaurant, not a dish that took about 30 minutes from start to finish on a weeknight.
I’ll be putting this recipe into my weekly rotation, and I’m excited to try the sauce with steak, salmon fillets, and even pork chops!
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