Chicken breasts with currant jelly sauce

Chicken breasts with currant jelly sauce

Adapted from “Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s Practical Pantry,” by Cathy Barrow. While this book is mostly concerned with food preservation, she also includes some bonus recipes to use the items you preserve. In this recipe, it’s the red currant jelly, which I happened to have a partial jar of on hand.

Ingredients

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

½ cup flour, mixed liberally with pepper and some salt

2 tablespoons olive oil

3 tablespoons butter, divided

1 shallot, minced

½ cup white wine

½ cup red currant jelly

2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

Method

Pat chicken breasts dry with paper towels. Dredge in flour mixture. Heat oil and 2 tablespoons butter in a deep saute pan over medium high heat. Add breasts, top side down (skin-side, if it still had it on). Let come to a deep brown, about 8 to 10 minutes. Flip over and brown the other side, cooking until done, another 6 minutes or so.

Remove from pan and tent to keep warm. Lower heat to medium. Add shallots to pan and cook until softened. Add wine, deglazing the pan. Whisk in jelly, thyme and mustard and cook until slightly thickened. Add remaining 1 tablespoon of butter and season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve sauce over chicken.

Rating: Nice flavors and a fairly speedy way to make a quite presentable supper. If I found myself with these ingredients on hand and unexpected guests on my doorstep, this could measure up while still being essentially a fast weeknight meal. 

And it's one less bottle of little bits of jelly eating up room in my refrigerator. Speaking of refrigerator space, Samsung has come out with a counter-depth version of its T9000. It's a four-door model with one portion that can flex between a freezer or a refrigerator depending on what kind of storage space you need most at that moment. Genius idea, if it works.