Robert Irvine’s Chicken Francese (from Resturant Impossible – Anna Marie’s)

Last Thursday, I was planning on what to make for dinner, when it dawned on me I had on hand the ingredients I needed to make a recipe a Restaurant Impossible episode that just aired the previous night. So I thought that would be something great to review for the site. In this episode Robert Irvine was helping out a restaurant called Anna Marie’s. They made a chicken francese, but Robert felt the chef needed some help with his technique. This chicken dish is basically a chicken breast coated in flour, then pan fried, with a sauce on top. The sauce is made of chicken stock, butter, and some lemon juice. Not exactly fat free, but something that sounds very tasty.

Below you will find my notes from this recipe. For the full recipe visit Food Network’s website.

1. The key thing to do this recipe right is to get a nice, crispy breading on the outside. So you need to make sure your pan plenty hot before adding the chicken. This is what the chef of Anna Marie’s was failing to do, so he was ending up with a soggy coating.

2. I had pretty thick chicken breasts. I used a meat mallet to flatten them out some. It still took me longer to cook mine than the 3-4 minutes per side, Robert said.

3. Making the sauce is pretty easy. It gets a lot of great flavor from deglazing the bottom of the pan. Deglazing is a key to mae an outstanding sauce. The bits that stick to the bottom of the pan are full of flavor, and you can use a liquid (chicken stock) to free those bites. So make sure you get every little bit you can off the bottom of the pan.

4. Speaking of the pan, choosing the correct pan is very important. If you use non-stick those bites will never form on the bottom of the pan. So you need a a good stainless saute pan.

5. I also wanted to point out that Robert likes uses grape seed oil. I didn’t have any, so I just went with canola oil.

This chicken was delicious. It was moist, and juicy and the sauce brought it to a whole another level. My youngest daughter doesn’t eat much meat, but we couldn’t cut this up fast enough for her! A much better alternative that the frozen chicken nuggets, parents present to their children as a last resort.