Feb 032012
This is one of my all-time favourite chicken recipes. It uses fresh sage leaves, which crisp up in the cooking process and infuse into the sauce, making this dish super-tasty. In fact, this is really a recipe for sauce, and the chicken is just there to soak it up!
Use one chicken breast per person. If you use fewer than 4 chicken breasts, you don’t have to adjust the rest of the recipe, you’ll just end up with extra sage leaves and sauce.
Tip: Grow a sage plant in your herb garden, and keep some frozen chicken breasts on hand, and you’ll be able to throw this together at the last minute.
Ingredients
- 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
- 1 – 15g package of sage leaves (about ½ ounce or 30 large leaves)
- ½ cup lemon juice
- 6 Tbsp olive oil
- ¼ cup butter
- salt and pepper
Directions
- Season the chicken breasts with salt and pepper.
- Put the chicken breasts in a non-metallic bowl, add 3 Tbsp of olive oil, the lemon juice, and the sage leaves. Let the mixture marinate in the fridge for an hour or so. (If you are in a rush, you can skip the marinating and it will be just fine.)
- Heat the butter and the remaining 3 Tbsp of olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat. When the mixture starts to get bubbly, add the chicken breasts, saving the sage leaves and marinade.
- Cook over medium for about 8 minutes, being careful not to burn the chicken.
- Turn the chicken breasts over, and add the sage leaves to the butter/oil mixture in the bottom of the pan. (Continue to reserve the rest of the lemon/oil marinade).
- Cook the chicken and the sage leaves for about 5 more minutes. The sage leaves fry in the butter/oil mixture and turn from a pale green colour to a dark green/brown colour.
- Pull the sage leaves out of the frying pan, and let them cool on a paper towel. They will crisp up as they cool off. Be careful not to overcook the sage leaves.
- Continue to cook the chicken breasts for about 3 more minutes or until they are cooked through. If you are using thick chicken breasts, you may want to cut each breast in to 4 or 5 large chunks at this point to speed up the cooking. This also gives the chicken more of a chance to soak up the sauce.
- When the chicken is fully cooked, pull it out of the pan, cover it, and set it aside.
- Make the sauce by adding the remaining lemon/oil marinade to the pan. Stir for about a minute, scraping the burnt bits off the side and bottom of the pan to form a thick brown sauce. Be careful not to cook the sauce for too long, or it might start to separate.
- Return the chicken to the pan to coat it in sauce
- Serve the chicken with a few spoonfuls of sauce and a sprinkle of crispy sage leaves.
To keep your meal low-carb, try serving this dish with some steamed broccoli or cauliflower purée.
| Chicken breasts with crispy sage | Serves 4 |
| Calories | 548 |
| Total Fat | 34.7 |
| Total Carbohydrate | 2.6 |
| Dietary Fibre | 0.1 |
| Sugars | 0.7 |
| Protein | 54.7 |
Just cooked this for dinner. It was very very good. I added way more sage than suggested and next time I’ll add even more. I love crispy sage. Having a sage plant right outside my door helps. The bit of extra sauce I put on the table so people could pour more on the chicken or on the vegetables.