Lemon Butter Dijon Skillet Chicken

Christmas Eve was Saturday December twenty-fourth and Christmas was Sunday and the household held the holiday whole, and I want to write that on the page in pen before I tell you about the dinner, because the holding is the part that mattered and the dinner was the prop that the holding hung on.

I want to say what Christmas a year ago was, because the comparison is the whole story. Christmas a year ago was three of us at the kitchen table not speaking, over cold turkey sandwiches that Mama had bought from the deli at Walmart on Christmas Eve afternoon because she had not had the energy for cooking, and Cody was high and not looking at either of us, and Daddy had been gone six months and Mama had been working closing shifts the entire week of the holiday, and the year had used everybody up, and the table was the kind of table that the year had used up too. Mama and I cleared the plates after a half hour and went to our rooms and the day ended at seven o’clock at night with three closed doors in three different parts of the house. That was Christmas 2015.

Christmas 2016 was the three of us at the kitchen table at six in the evening on Christmas Eve eating lemon butter Dijon skillet chicken and roasted red potatoes and a salad with the Greek dressing I have been making since April. Christmas Day Sunday was the three of us at the table at twelve-thirty in the afternoon eating a small ham Mama got on sale at Walmart for $4.99 with mashed potatoes and green bean casserole and the small handful of biscuits I made from scratch. The table was quiet in the right kind of way. The presents were under a small artificial tree from the dollar store on Albany that we have had since 2009 and that gets put up every December and taken down every January because Mama says she does not have the energy to fight a real tree anymore. The presents had been wrapped in newspaper and tied with kitchen twine because we did not have the budget for wrapping paper and because newspaper-and-twine is a kind of wrapping that has a tradition behind it in this household going back to my grandmother.

The presents went the way I had planned them. Mama opened her slip-resistant work shoes from Walmart Christmas morning and she sat at the kitchen table and she put one on her left foot over the old shoes and she stood up and she walked across the kitchen and she said, oh, baby, my feet have been hurting for a year. She did not say it sad. She said it the way people say things when something painful is finally being addressed. She put the other shoe on. She walked back across the kitchen. She came over to me and she hugged me for a long minute, with the new shoes on her feet, and she did not let go until she was ready to.

Cody opened his hardcover Grapes of Wrath from the Salvation Army, the paint scraper from O’Reilly Auto Parts, and the small set of fine-grit sandpaper. He held all three on his lap for a minute. He turned the paint scraper over in his hand and looked at the handle. He flipped the book open and read the first paragraph silently. Then he said, Kay, this is exactly what I needed. Not this is real good, Kay, the way he says about food. The same shape of sentence as the carnitas: specific. Marked. The kind of sentence that says I am paying attention to what is in front of me.

I opened my hat from Mama. The dark green hand-knit hat she had been making for two months in the evenings while pretending I did not see her. I put it on. The fit was perfect, because Mama has been knitting around my head my whole life and knows what to do. Mama said, it’s the color of your notebook, baby. I said, I know it is, Mama. She said, I knew you knew. And we both laughed at the same time, the kind of laugh I have not done with my mama since before Daddy left, and the laugh, more than the hat, was the gift. I want to put that on the page. The laugh was the gift.

And then the dinner. I want to walk you through the recipe because the recipe is the kind of recipe that is going to live in this kitchen for the rest of my life, and because the technique — the pan sauce — is one of the techniques worth keeping in the back of any cook’s notebook.

The recipe was Averie Cooks’ Lemon Butter Dijon Skillet Chicken. The whole dinner happens in one cast iron in twenty-five minutes. The math: a six-pack of bone-in skin-on chicken thighs from the markdown rack at Walmart, $3.20 (marked down from $5.99 because they were a day from sell-by). A lemon, forty-nine cents. A small jar of Dijon mustard, $1.49 (the jar will last me the rest of the year of cooking, which is the kind of math that pays back). Three tablespoons of butter, fifty cents. Four cloves of garlic from the bulb on the counter, free. A half cup of chicken broth from a bouillon cube dissolved in water, ten cents. Salt, pepper, dried thyme from the rack. A pound of small red potatoes roasted on a sheet pan with olive oil and salt at 425 for thirty minutes, $1.49 from the bag. A small head of romaine lettuce $0.99, chopped for a salad with the Greek dressing I always have in the fridge. Total cost of Christmas Eve dinner: about $9.40 for three of us, with two pieces of leftover chicken for Sunday lunch.

The technique is the pan sauce, and I want to walk you through it in detail because the pan sauce is a tool that turns a regular pan-seared piece of chicken into a restaurant-style plate.

You pat the chicken thighs dry with paper towels — this is important; wet skin will not crisp. You season both sides with salt and pepper. You heat a tablespoon of olive oil in the cast iron skillet over medium-high heat until it shimmers. You place the chicken thighs skin-side down in the pan, and you do not move them for eight full minutes. The skin needs that long to render its fat, brown, and become crisp. After eight minutes the skin should be deep golden and release easily from the pan. You flip the thighs. You cook on the meat side for three more minutes, until the chicken is fully cooked through (an instant-read thermometer should hit 165 in the thickest part).

You take the chicken out of the pan and set it on a plate. You drain off most of the rendered fat from the pan, leaving about a tablespoon. You drop the heat to medium-low. You add three tablespoons of butter to the pan. As the butter melts, you add four minced cloves of garlic and you cook for thirty seconds, just until fragrant. You add the juice of half a lemon, two tablespoons of Dijon mustard, a half cup of chicken broth, and a teaspoon of dried thyme. You whisk the sauce together until smooth and glossy. The sauce thickens slightly as the broth reduces. The whole pan-sauce step takes about two minutes.

You return the chicken thighs to the skillet, skin-side up, nestling them into the sauce. You let them warm in the sauce for two minutes. You serve directly from the skillet, spooning the sauce over the chicken on each plate.

The dinner Christmas Eve at six was the three of us at the kitchen table. Mama had her old shoes on still — the new ones were waiting for Christmas morning. Cody was in the gray sweater Aunt Tammy had given him last year that he has been wearing this whole winter. I was in the green flannel I bought at Goodwill for $4 in October. The chicken was in the cast iron in the middle of the table on a folded dish towel. The roasted potatoes were in a bowl next to it. The salad was in a separate bowl. The kitchen window was closed, because December, but the curtains were open, and I could see the small Christmas lights on the Hendersons’ house through the glass.

Cody said, after his first bite, this is the best chicken I have ever had in my life. Mama said, baby, this is the kind of dinner restaurants charge twenty dollars a plate for. I said, I know what restaurants charge, and I know what this cost me, and I am not going to tell you because tonight is Christmas Eve and the math gets to stop being the math for a minute. Mama and Cody both laughed.

The X marks on the calendar are at seventy-three. Seventeen to go. Mama’s new shoes are by the front door. Cody’s book is on his nightstand with the bookmark on page four. My green hat is on the kitchen counter. The cast iron is washed and back on the stove. The Christmas was Christmas. We held it. We are going to hold the rest of the seventeen days too.

The recipe is below, the way Averie Cooks wrote it. The trick I want you to keep is the pan-sauce technique — the eight-minute skin-side-down sear, the chicken removed, the butter and aromatics in the same pan, the broth and lemon juice and Dijon whisked in, the chicken returned to warm in the sauce. The same five steps work with white wine instead of broth, with capers instead of Dijon, with shallots instead of garlic. Once you have the pan-sauce technique, you have a hundred recipes. Make this on a Christmas Eve. Make it on any other night too.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 20 minutes | Total Time: 30 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 6 oz each), pounded to even thickness
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup low-sodium chicken broth
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (about 1 lemon)
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1 tablespoon fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped (for garnish)

Instructions

Season the chicken. Pat chicken breasts dry with paper towels — this is what gets you a good sear. Season both sides evenly with salt, pepper, and garlic powder.
Sear until golden. Heat olive oil in a large cast iron skillet or heavy oven-safe pan over medium-high heat until shimmering. Add chicken and sear without moving for 5–6 minutes until deeply golden. Flip and cook another 4–5 minutes, until cooked through (internal temperature 165°F). Transfer to a plate and tent loosely with foil.
Build the pan sauce. Reduce heat to medium. Add 1 tablespoon of the butter to the same skillet. Once melted, add the minced garlic and cook 30–60 seconds, stirring, until fragrant — don’t let it burn. Pour in the chicken broth and scrape up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Those bits are flavor; don’t leave them behind.
Add the Dijon and lemon. Whisk in the Dijon mustard, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Let the sauce simmer 2–3 minutes until it reduces slightly and coats the back of a spoon.
Finish with butter. Remove the skillet from heat and swirl in the remaining 2 tablespoons of cold butter until the sauce is glossy and emulsified.
Plate and serve. Return the chicken to the skillet and spoon the sauce generously over each piece. Garnish with fresh parsley. Serve immediately with mashed potatoes, egg noodles, or a simple green vegetable.

Nutrition (per serving)

Lemon Butter Dijon Skillet Chicken — The Christmas Eve Dinner the Year We Held the Holiday