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Award-winning chef, author and forager Alan Bergo. Food is all around you.

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Pan Roasted Chicken Breast with Duxelles Sauce

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Pan roasted chicken breast with crispy skin and hedgehog mushroom duxelles sauce

I like my duxelles sauce thick like a condiment, you might like your’s a little looser, there isn’t a wrong way to make it.

You had a  great mushroom hunting season, you crushed the chanterelles, boletes, and all the mushrooms you wanted to get. You made duxelles, and put some in the freezer for a rainy day in the off-season. Great, but now what do you do with the duxelles?

Duxelles in stuffings and such is great, but one of the simplest and most pure ways of enjoying the flavor of duxelles is to make a simple mushroom pan sauce.
 
Any sort of meat preparation that leaves some browned bits or drippings in a pan will work great, but to make sure you get a good amount of drippings, you want a thick cut of meat like an 8 ounce steak, a roast, or a bone in chicken breast like I’m outlining here. You can defintely just cook down some chicken or beef stock and whisk in duxelles and butter too. There’s no wrong way to do this, as long as it tastes good to you. Think of this as a broad guideline, not a strict recipe.
 
hedgehog mushrooms

Hedgehogs make a great duxelles, if you can find enough of them. I occasionally find large fruits of them where I live in Minnesota, but not every year. Also, I could’ve cleaned those better in the field.

Any species of mushroom for duxelles will do. 

I used a duxelles made from hedgehog mushrooms, but you could use whatever you have on hand. Shoot, even button mushrooms will taste great in duxelles.

Improvising duxelles with dried mushrooms 

You can fashion a duxelles from dried mushrooms, but since the mushrooms are dried and concentrated, the flavors can become bitter sometimes, especially with black trumpets or lobster mushrooms. To curb any bitterness, use a larger amount of fresh mushrooms (white buttons from the store are fine) to cut and smooth out the flavor of the dried mushrooms when preparing the duxelles.
 
Pan roasted chicken breast with crispy skin and wild mushroom duxelles sauce

Rest that bird, then slice. Notice how in the pictures of the finished dish their isn’t any juice being wept onto the plate by the chicken, which will dilute your final sauce while you eat. Same goes for literally every type of meat sans fish and shellfish.

How to get the crispiest skin on a chicken breast 

You want that rock hard skin that goes “tink-tink-tink” when you tap it. Everyone knows crispy skin is addictive as crack, and I love a good roast chicken, but lets be honest, you can’t do it everynight, and getting a whole bird to have crispy skin is a feat. A quick-trick weeknight fix  is a bone-in, skin on breast that will cook in about 15 minutes. A quick vacation in the oven and that bird’s coming out singing. It’s the same way I cook them at restaurants, as do most chefs.

There’s a couple tricks to getting a rock-hard chicken skin though. You don’t have to use all the tips I outline, but following them will give a superior product. Don’t have time to dry brine the bird overnight? No prob. Dry the chicky boobs off really good with paper towels, season them and proceed à la Minute. Here’s what I suggest:

Dry Brine Overnight 

This means season the chicken with salt and pepper the night before, then leave it out UNCOVERED, skin side up in the refrigerator, so that the skin dries out. Freaked out from memories of old steak you forgot about in the fridge? Don’t be, it’s going to be aweome.

Pan Roasting

Put the chicken skin-down into a hot pan, then into the oven, 375-400F is good. When the chicken is just done, remove the pan and inspect the skin by lifting up the breast. If the skin needs to be more golden brown (read as rock-hard and golden), put the pan back on the burner for a minute or two over medium heat to get a perfect golden brown.

Rest That Meat!

You need to to take the bird out of the pan to rest it SKIN SIDE UP before slicing, this could happen in an oven thats been turned off, or in even just on a cutting board as pictured here. The great part is that doing this all in one pan means that it kind of forces you to rest the bird, since you want to deglaze and harvest all the delicious chickenly bits in the pan.

Pan roasted chicken breast with crispy skin and wild mushroom duxelles sauce

Note how there is no juice exuded by the breast to dilute your sauce, this is because the meat was rested….It’ll be juicier that way.

Pan roasted chicken breast with crispy skin and hedgehog mushroom duxelles sauce
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Chicken Breast with Crispy Skin and Mushroom Duxelle Pan Sauce 

Skin-on, bone-in, roasted chicken with mushroom sauce
Prep Time15 mins
Cook Time10 mins
Course: Main Course
Cuisine: French
Keyword: Chicken Breast, Duxelles, Pan Roasted, Pan Sauce
Servings: 2

Equipment

  • Heavy pan, like cast iron

Ingredients

  • 2 bone in chicken breasts with wing bone attached
  • Kosher salt and pepper
  • Cooking oil like lard or high heat oil
  • 1/2 cup chicken stock preferably made from a carcass to include the feet
  • 2 tablespoons unsalted butter

Instructions

  • The day beforehand, season the chicken with salt and allow to sit out overnight. When it's time to cook, heat a pan with a little oil, add a chicken skin side down for a minute on high, then put in the  oven. Put the pan in the oven until the chicken is just done, about 155F. Take the chicken breasts out of the pan, and let rest in a warm place.
  • There should be a bunch of nice drippings crusted in the pan. Deglaze the pan with a splash of wine, scrape up the bits, then add a good spoon of duxelles and a good 1/2 cup of nice chicken stock. Simmer the mixture until all the bits have been incorporated into the sauce, then whisk in a tablespoon or so of butter and stir until it melts. Taste the sauce for salt, adjust as needed (it may not need anything, and keep in mind it still needs to reduce.)
  • When the butter has thickened the sauce and it tastes really good, you could finish the sauce with a little parsley or chives. To finish, slice the chicken, then put skin-side up on a plate.
  • Spoon the sauce cascading off the bird, or on the side (to make sure the skin doesn’t become soft) and serve immediately, with a vegetable side, cooked wild greens would be great.
Pan roasted chicken breast with crispy skin and wild mushroom duxelles sauce
 

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Daniele Kay

    July 8, 2018 at 6:35 am

    are you really saying leave chicken out of frig overnight? Or just uncovered in frig?????

    Reply
    • Alan Bergo

      July 8, 2018 at 11:19 am

      Thanks for commenting. I adjusted the note so that it reads a little more clearly. No, I would never leave poultry out overnight and then eat it, the chicken needs to stay under refrigeration, the dessication of the refrigeratator helps to tighten up the skin and makes a big difference, I do it with all kinds of meat and fish, it’s also a technique heavily used for smoked fish.

      Reply
  2. Jeanette Rodman

    April 12, 2022 at 10:03 pm

    Love the duxelles recipe and will definitely use it to put up the ginormous amount of wine caps just harvested from my flower garden wood chips in Delaware. Can’t wait to try the chick breat! The overnight in the fridge reminded me of making Peking Duch, which called for a fan! I used a battery-powered camping fan 😋 That was some crispy skin!

    Reply

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FORAGER | CHEF®
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Author: The Forager Chef’s Book of Flora
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Alan Bergo
Long, fun day snatching crayfish out of the water Long, fun day snatching crayfish out of the water by hand with Sam Thayer and @danielvitalis for @wild.fed 

Daniel and Sam were the apex predators, but I got a few. 

Without a net catching crayfish by hand is definitely a wax-on wax-off sort of skill. Clears your mind. 

They’re going into gumbo with porcini, sausage and milkweed pods today. 

#crayfish #ninjareflexes #waxonwaxoff #normalthings #onset🎥🎬
Working all day on preps for cattail lateral rhizo Working all day on preps for cattail lateral rhizomes and blueberries for this weeks shoot with @wildfed 

Been a few years since I worked with these. Thankfully Sam Thayer dropped a couple off for me to work with. They’re tender, crisp and delicious. 

Sam mentioned their mild flavor and texture could be because they don’t have to worry about predators eating them, since they grow in the muck of cattail marshes. 

I think they could use a pet name. Pond tusk? Swamp spears? Help me out here. 😂

Nature makes the coolest things. 

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I liked the staff meal I made for Mondays shoot so I liked the staff meal I made for Mondays shoot so much we filmed it instead of the original dish I’d planned. 

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Next up blewits. Spawn from @northsporemushrooms

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If you’re interested send me a message and I’ll raffle off the spots. Plenty of cherries to go around. I’ll be leading a short plant walk around the farm too. 

#chokecherries #foraging #prunusvirginiana #summervibes
Special thanks to the beach in Ashland for hooking Special thanks to the beach in Ashland for hooking it up with on-site garnishes. Beach pea flowers taste strong and leguminous, similar to vetch, or like a rich tasting pea shoot. 

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