I ended up cooking again tonight. No rest for the newly-appointed primary cook I suppose. I had a pack of chicken breasts plus a single chicken breast in the freezer and a bag of mushrooms in the fridge, so I went online to see what I could make with what I had. I found this recipe on the Laughing Spatula blog: Easy Chicken Breasts with Mushroom Pan Sauce. It had chicken breasts, it had mushrooms, and it had the appealing fact of being a one-pan meal. The chicken breasts cook in the pan, then they come out to rest and you make the mushroom sauce (mine came out as a thick gravy, actually).

I like this recipe and it is worth playing with again, although the chicken breasts I was using were a goodly amount larger than the recipe was thinking of.  They were Costco sized chicken breasts, so they probably run rather large. The instructions say to cook the breasts at medium-high heat on one side for 4-5 minutes, then on the other side for 4-5 minutes, and they will be done. Not even close. Even though I cut each breast in half (across the horizontal, like butterflying but all the way through), 8-10 minutes was not enough time to cook the chicken breasts. It took almost double that.

Once the chicken was done I put it in the oven (which I had set to warm) to rest and made the pan sauce per instructions. Have I already mentioned that I love one-pot meals? The mushroom pan sauce started out looking like nothing much and not enough to make gravy for four servings. The Laughing Spatula did have a good tip for getting your mushrooms to brown. I’m not telling though, you’ll have to go to their blog post on this recipe to see what the secret is!

Fortunately, when I finished the recipe I actually did have a nice mushroom pan sauce/gravy that was plenty for both the chicken and the mashed potatoes I made as a side. It did taste a little overcooked since the chicken took longer and thus the pan leavings were almost burned. If your pan leavings from the chicken do burn I would recommend cleaning out the pan between the chicken and the mushrooms. You will lose a bit of the flavor from the chicken, but if that flavor is burnt you may be better off missing it.

The next time I try this recipe I think I will turn down the heat a bit after I get a nice browning on the chicken. Hopefully that will cook the chicken and keep the tasty pan leavings from getting overcooked when I make the gravy. I wonder if covering the pan after the initial browning on the chicken would help with the cooking time and moistness to preserve the drippings for the sauce? I may need to try that next time.

It probably would have been a thinner sauce if I had taken it off the heat as soon as I added the chicken stock. But the gravy was tasty, and I proceeded to smother both the chicken and the mashed potatoes with it.

It may not be the prettiest dinner, but it tasted good. Brown gravy just isn’t that photogenic. I guess I could have added a sprig of parsley or something. The picture probably would have looked more appealing if I hadn’t covered the chicken with the gravy before I took the photo, but gravy!

I did add a salad (from a bag) to make this dinner kinda-sorta healthy. The Laughing Spatula might become one of my favorite blogs if more of their recipes are as cook-friendly and tasty as this one!