Chicken Breast with Mushrooms in Tomato Sauce – Step-by-Step Recipe

Name: Chicken Breast with Mushrooms in Tomato Sauce – Step-by-Step Recipe
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 40 min
Total time: 60 min
Yield: 2
Cuisine: European
Ingredients: Chicken breast fillets 2; Button mushrooms 200 g; Olive oil 4-5 tbsp; Onions 2-3; Bell pepper 1; Tomato paste 1 tbsp; Fresh dill 1-2 sprigs; Salt, black pepper, sugar, nutmeg to taste

Chicken fillet is the everyday name for the white meat of the bird — in plain words, the chicken breast. The most famous dish made from it is, without a doubt, chicken Kyiv. Then again, plenty of people would argue with that. Chicken breast with mushrooms, stewed or baked, is a very tasty main course that many people love.

In the old days the word fillet most often meant simply a piece of meat trimmed of membranes, fat and bones. At the butcher's, a piece of meat was usually wrapped in paper and tied with a thread. That, apparently, is where the name comes from, since a thread (a thin string) is written in French as filet. Little by little the term took root and spread to all meat and fish.

Chicken breast is a special kind of meat. It is called white because it contains very little of the bird's blood, and it turns very pale when cooked. The other parts of the chicken, rich in blood vessels, have a distinctly red tint and stay dark after cooking.

In North America white chicken meat is preferred, and the chicken breast sold there is fairly expensive. They say, though, that the low price of the exported dark meat is made up for by the domestic price of the breast. Quite often on restaurant menus in the USA you will come across chicken Kiev — that same famous chicken Kyiv: a pounded chicken breast wrapped around a piece of cold butter, coated in breadcrumbs and deep-fried. It is top class when the little chicken bone is left in the cutlet and the cutlet itself is served on a slice of toasted white bread.

Chicken breast is the ideal poultry meat for all kinds of ragouts. This is a whole class of dishes built on one idea: fried ingredients (meat, vegetables, mushrooms) are stewed in a thick sauce. White ragout, or blanquette, is made from young veal or chicken breast. Then there are all sorts of goulash — fried pieces of meat stewed in tomato sauce.

Given how easy the meat is to find and its relatively low price, chicken breast dishes are very popular and, importantly, can be cooked quickly and in hundreds of ways. Often it is enough to fry pieces of chicken breast, add whatever vegetables and mushrooms are at hand, stew it all in a sauce, and you have an excellent breakfast — chicken breast with mushrooms. What to cook with chicken breast? I recommend this chicken breast with mushrooms recipe.

Ingredients

2 servings

Chicken breast fillets 2
Button mushrooms 200 g
Olive oil 4-5 tbsp
Onions 2-3
Bell pepper 1
Tomato paste 1 tbsp
Fresh dill 1-2 sprigs
Salt, black pepper, sugar, nutmeg to taste

Step-by-step recipe

If the chicken breast is frozen, thaw it beforehand. It is best to move the two fillets from the freezer to the fridge the evening before. Overnight they will thaw without leaking. These days, though, you can buy chicken breast that has never been frozen in any shop. Trim the fillets of membranes and leftover fat and carefully remove any small bones.
Rinse the fillets and cut them into pieces of 25-30 g each.
Season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper. Prepare the vegetables and mushrooms. If the mushrooms are small, just wash them and clean off any bits of compost. Larger mushrooms are worth cutting in half. Seed the fleshy bell pepper and cut it into medium-sized slices. Peel the onions and slice them into rings.
Heat 2 tbsp of olive oil in a frying pan. Wait for a light white smoke and the characteristic smell to appear. Fry the chicken pieces in the olive oil for 5-6 minutes. The pieces should be fried on all sides. There is no need to aim for the beautiful golden crust that recipes usually call for.
Add the sliced mushrooms and bell pepper to the chicken. Season with salt and pepper to taste if you like. Stirring, keep frying everything over high heat for another 8-10 minutes. By the end the mushrooms and pepper should be soft. Transfer the fried chicken with mushrooms and pepper to a baking dish.
Pour the rest of the measured olive oil into the pan and fry the onion rings in it. Fry the onion until golden. Then salt and pepper it, add grated nutmeg — just what fits on the tip of a knife — and 0.5 tsp of sugar.
Depending on the season, add tomato in one form or another. It can be tomato paste diluted in water (1 heaped tbsp), or half a can of crushed tomatoes, or a homemade puree of fresh tomatoes. Experience shows that the simplest way is to add a cup of good tomato juice. Add water so that the onion and tomato mixture is roughly as thick as heavy sour cream. Bring the tomato to a boil and cover the pan with a lid. Let the tomato sauce with onion simmer over low heat for 10 minutes.
Pour the finished sauce over the chicken, mushrooms and pepper in the baking dish. Level the surface so that the sauce covers the whole dish. Put the dish into an oven preheated to 220 °C. The cooking time is 20 minutes from the moment the liquid in the dish comes to a boil.
Put the finished chicken breast with mushrooms on a plate and sprinkle with finely chopped dill.
Mashed potatoes make a good side dish for chicken breast with mushrooms. By the way, if you make a bit more sauce, couscous is a delicious side as well. Couscous is quick and easy to cook, but it is a little dry, so more sauce is better.