Chicken Breasts With Lemon
- Total Time
- 25 minutes
- Rating
- Notes
- Read community notes
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Ingredients
Yield:4 servings
- ½cup flour for dredging
- Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
- 4skinless boneless chicken breasts, about 6 ounces each
- 2tablespoons olive oil
- 4sprigs fresh thyme or 1 teaspoon dried
- 2tablespoons finely chopped shallots
- 2teaspoons finely chopped garlic
- 2teaspoons grated lemon zest
- 3tablespoons lemon juice
- ½cup chicken broth, fresh or canned
- 2tablespoons butter
Ingredient Substitution Guide
Nutritional analysis per serving (4 servings)
396 calories; 18 grams fat; 6 grams saturated fat; 0 grams trans fat; 8 grams monounsaturated fat; 2 grams polyunsaturated fat; 16 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram dietary fiber; 1 gram sugars; 41 grams protein; 586 milligrams sodium
Note: The information shown is Edamam’s estimate based on available ingredients and preparation. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.
Powered byPreparation
- Step 1
Season flour with salt and pepper, and dredge the chicken all over. Remove the excess flour.
- Step 2
Heat the oil in a heavy skillet large enough to hold the chicken pieces in one layer. Add chicken and cook, uncovered, over medium heat for 5 minutes or until lightly browned.
- Step 3
Flip the chicken and cook for 5 minutes more, or until cooked through. Carefully remove the oil from the skillet, leaving the chicken. Discard the oil.
- Step 4
Add the thyme, shallots and garlic, and cook for about a minute. Do not burn the garlic. Add the lemon rind, the lemon juice and the broth.
- Step 5
Scrape the skillet to dissolve the brown particles that cling to the bottom. Add the butter, and cook for 3 minutes longer. Serve immediately.
Private Notes
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Cooking Notes
Chris
This looks really good, but I'm confused about something. After you brown the chicken on both sides, you discard the oil, add the broth, etc., how long do you continue to cook the chicken? It would have to be at least half an hour. I want to cook this. Any advice?
Sharon
I like to brown the chicken and then remove from the pan. Pour off any excess oil and then cook the shallot and garlic and thyme leaves briefly and then add the liquid (wine, chicken broth) along with the lemon zest and juice. After it simmers for a few minutes to thicken a little add the butter to the sauce and return chicken to pan to finish cooking (five minutes)
Andrea B
Chris - I cooked as indicated, 5 mins one side (Step 2), flipped and cooked another 5 mins (Step 3), cooked another minute with thyme, shallots and garlic (Step 4) and finally an additional 3 mins (Step 5). Came out perfect!
Randy
1) Remove the chicken before making the sauce.
2) Do not wipe out the pan. Alex is right, that would also remove the fond. Pour off the excess oil. You need a thin film of the oil left in the pan to sauté the shallot & garlic.
3) The butter is added after reducing the liquid so it will emulsify and thicken the sauce. If you add it before you will get a greasy broken sauce. Add the butter, whisk it in then add the chicken to the sauce and you're finished.
Eileen
Kevin O’Sullivan, I just read this recipe today and saw your question about lemon zest remained unanswered. Lemon zest is the yellow part of a lemon’s skin. The white part of the skin under the zest is called the pith and has an undesirable chalky taste. To remove zest but not pith from a lemon requires a light hand. Use an extremely sharp and small paring knife with slight pressure to shave off only the yellow. Or a micro-hole grater with light pressure to scrape at the skin. Hope this helps.
Kevin O'Sullivan
What exactly is 'lemon zest' please? Is it lemon skin, or the juice that can be squeezed out of lemon skin, or...?
Kevin (Somerset, England)
Hekla Arnardottir
Would probably be good to cut the chicken breast longways in half.
Andrew
Loved the recipe. I used a full cup of chicken broth to make more sauce. I also used dill (b/c that is all that I had) and it tasted great. I added artichoke hearts and capers. Yum!
George
This looks great. Why would you not remove the chicken to a platter,wipe out the oil and add the butter, stock and aromatics while the chicken keeps warm...wouldn't this insure a nice brown crust and lovely sauce?
Meta
I really miss Pierre Franey. What a touch. Recipe was simple, fast and delicious.
Mario
brown the chicken remove from the pan. Pour off excess oil cook shallot, garlic, thyme leaves briefly add liquid (wine, chicken broth) lemon zest and juice, simmers to thicken add the butter return chicken to pan to finish cooking (five minutes)
modify to coat chicken with breadcrumbs
made this with fish fillets - it was delicious. cooked the fish (rock cod fillets for 3 minutes per side; skipped the broth; otherwise everything was the same. This recipe lends itself well to milder fish.
Frances
Fast & easy to prepare. I used white wine instead of the broth since I had some handy & it worked fine. Nice moist chicken.
Slightly Inept But Well-Meaning Cook
This has been consistently delicious--though you can easily make do with less than half a cup of flour, and less butter, as well. The garlic and shallots do tend to burn (in well under a minute) when they're added to a pan that hot (that's been drained of oil).
Fahema
I used thinly sliced boneless skinless chicken breasts and 5 minutes on each side resulted in perfect chicken. Any longer than the directions and the chicken would be too dry.
Pauline
It is so nice to see a Pierre Franey recipe - more, please.
Anne
Terrific mid-week recipe. A few tweaks: I don't think it's necessary to remove the oil after browning the chix. I doubled shallots and added capers at the end. One could deglaze with a dry white wine before adding the stock. Do not boil liquid after adding butter, the sauce will break. Hit it with fresh chopped Italian parsley before serving. Really delicious over rice, pasta or Israeli couscous.
montana wifey
Great flavor, tastes like a perfect dish for fish.
Marilyn
As the recipe specifies, the breast should be 6 ounces. If they are that weight they will turn out perfect.
Cara
This was the only protein I could stomach during my first trimester pregnant given my constant nausea - something about the mildness of the chicken breast and the sourness of the sauce just worked. One thing I’ll note is that if you get the typical (large) chicken breasts from the supermarket, you’ll need more time (5 mins) in the last step or the chicken will be undercooked. Thank you for this recipe- the only thing keeping me from eating just toast and oranges for 2-3 months!
Greg
I AM NOT A COOK but can follow a recipe - this came out DELISH!
Stephanie
Cut the breast in half longways. Otherwise it takes twice the time to cook
Helen Hope
I doubled the lemon and it was way too much! The other flavors in the recipe were fantastic. I added a bit of white wine I found it still very good, but my boyfriend found it too rich and saucy.
peg
My chicken breasts were thick,so I cooked them 5 m 1st side 8m 2nd. Don’t do it. When they finish simmering in the sauce with a cover on very low heat for 5 m, they would be perfectly cooked @ 5m per side - mine were a little dry. Lucky there was sauce.
Suzanne
skinless/boneless chicken breasts are not enhanced by this recipe.
Suzanne
Added 2 tbsp capers. A wonderful dish either way.
Lep
My chicken was too tart. Will cut back on lemon juice next time.
naomi f
I made this for my folks tonight. Very nice. The chicken breasts I used were quite large. After browning on both sides for five minutes each, I broiled them for 5 min one side, 3 on the other. Perfect. Added back with the sauce.
Elise
Served with roast potato wedges and greens dressed in champagne vinaigrette. Didn’t have shallots, used thinly sliced onions. Subbed lemons for Meyer lemons and used much more of the rind sliced to match the onions. Very tasty Only change would be to pound the breast flat before dredging to cut down on cooking time, and let onions/shallots cook a bit longer so they melt into the sauce better
Betsey from Arkansas
This was absolutely delicious. I am recovering from surgery and couldn’t leave the house, so I substituted a small Vidalia onion for the shallots called for in the recipe. My head of garlic was, unfortunately, dried out, so I used garlic powder instead of the minced garlic called for in the recipe. As for herbs, I used thyme and dill, plus some fennel fronds. I ended up using my immersion blender (only to smooth out the minced onion). Will make this again - it was tasty!
Laura
This is a perfect lemony chicken. I also didn’t have any oil to speak of after browning the chicken breasts- this instruction is probably a hold over from an earlier, less oil accepting era. A variation I tried was doubling the sauce ingredients and adding in al dente pasta and fresh parsley at the end. Seems very much in the spirit of this excellent recipe.
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