Chicken in Creamy Gravy

I was having a horrific day yesterday, so my bestest friend of all my friends, Aki, invited me over for the ultimate comfort food: Biscuits and Gravy. So I apologize for the lack of an update yesterday, but it was well worth the wait.

Tonight's dinner comes from The Hillbilly Housewife. I can't tell if Susanne is an actual Hillbilly Housewife or if she's just playing one on the internet, but the purpose of her website is to help people reduce the size of your grocery bill and still keep your family well fed and healthy.

Chicken in Creamy Gravy

By: Susanne of the Hillbilly Housewife

• 4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves
• 1 tablespoon canola oil
• 1 can reduced fat cream of broccoli soup undiluted
• 1/4 cup fat free milk
• 2 teaspoons lemon juice
• 1/8 teaspoon pepper
• 4 lemon slices

Directions

1. In a nonstick skillet, cook chicken in oil until browned on both sides.  (Approx. 10 minutes)  Drain.
2. In a bowl combine soup, milk, lemon juice and pepper.  Pour over chicken.
3. Top each chicken breast with a lemon slice.
4. Reduce heat.  Cover and simmer until chicken juices run clear.  (Approx. 5 minutes)

Akari's Musings


Tonight's recipe is part review, part food safety lesson and part lesson in awesome.







I gathered up everything I was going to need for tonight's meal. You can see the stuffing mix and the cans of corn that I used for sides. The recipes calls for 4 chicken breasts, but I like pushing my bag o' chicken from Aldi as far as I can. Thus, I took 3 breasts and cut them in half. I didn't have any actual lemons, so I left those out. Our Aldi doesn't carry cream of broccoli soup, so I went with cream of chicken instead. Fearing an extremely bland gravy, I went to my spice rack and pulled out my bottle of Herbes de Provence. Since the stuffing mix had the herb mixture in it already I figured it would bring every thing together.

As I said before, I took the three chicken breast and cut them in half horizontally. After placing them in the hot skillet, I sprinkled them with a little salt, garlic powder and onion powder.







While the first side of the chicken was browning nicely, I moved on to the gravy. This is where my Herbes De Provence comes into play. I followed the directions pretty much exactly with the exception of adding about a tablespoon of Herbes de Provence.

I love this herb blend. I don't know why I don't use it more often. It compliments just about everything. According to The Epicentre, Herbes de Provence is a blend of spices that grow in the southern hills of France during the summer. It's a combination of bay leaf, thyme, fennel, rosemary, chervil, oregano, summer savory, tarragon, mint, and marjoram. (My particular blend consists of basil, marjoram, thyme, sage, savory and rosemary.) It was in the 1970s that standard mixtures were formulated by spice wholesalers. I haven't had much luck finding it pre-mixed in grocery stores around here, but then I haven't truly been looking. I've used Herbes de Provence on chicken and fish, but you can use it on just about anything. My friend Gizmo has a recipe for Herbes de Provence Roasted Asparagus that is to die for.






 A shot of how nicely the chicken browned

I flipped the chicken over to make sure it had browned up nicely before dumping the gravy on top. I sprinkled the top with a little paprika and waited for it to come to boil.






 Before the paprika

I set my timer for about 15 minutes. Yes, the recipe calls for 5 minutes, but my stove is jacked up. There's no better way to describe it. So I gave it a couple extra minutes to get to the right temperature. While the chicken was simmering away, I started the stuffing and the corn. There's not much to report there. It's a box stuffing mix. You boil water. You dump in some stuff. Stir. Done. The corn is open, drain, dump, butter, microwave. Not really rocket surgery, folks.

I let about 10 minutes lapse before checking the temperature of the chicken. Food safety should be second nature to all of us. They preach about cross contamination and safe temperature and THE DANGER ZONE!!!!! from the time we are barely able to reach a counter top. However, there just aren't enough kitchens out there with an instant read thermometer in the utensil drawer.





 Yes, it's Food Network. It was a Christmas Gift from my Mom. See the Paprika on top?  

My thermometer is a bit fancier than most kitchens need. Walmart sells a similar style for about $14. This is the kind where you can set it to a certain temperature and stick it in the oven. When the food hits that sweet spot, the alarm goes off and you no longer get under or over cooked roasts and/or chicken breast. Now, one of those cheap-ish jobs will do just nicely, but I strongly recommend you get some kind thermometer for your kitchen. Unless of course you like salmonella.

Once the chicken hit an internal temperature of 165 degrees, I removed them from the pan and added about 2 tbs of all purpose flour to thicken things up a bit. Did I need to add the flour? Probably not, but I wanted a little heartier gravy than just the soup.






This dish is definitely more attractive than the stroganoff from Monday. It was a simple and fast dish to prepare. It was pretty cost effective and extremely satisfying, even with just one half of a chicken breast. The herbes de provence in the gravy on the stuffing were just the right amount of seasoning. The house smells so freaking good right now! I'm sure my neighbors are jealous!

This one is going into the remake folder too. Any dish that goes from fridge to table in less than an hour is a winner in my book. I'm big on versatility and this one has got it in spades. There is so much you can do here to change it up. Change the flavor of soup, add in your own special herb and spice blends, maybe add some onions or some minced garlic. Honestly, the sky is the limit with this dish.

Chicken in Creamy Gravy gets the Akari Hoshi Stamp of Approval & on my scale of 1-10, definitely an 11.

~Akari~