- Yield: 4
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 30 minutes
Prosciutto Chicken with Lemon/Wine Sauce
This dish is super elegant yet doesn't require too much effort and is certainly easy enough even for a less experienced home cook. If you have all ingredients on hand, it only takes 30 minutes to throw together a great dinner to impress. I was serving this with some leftover risotto, but the creamy sauce with its fresh lemon and white wine flavor works great with some pasta, too.
I've tried several versions of this dish in order to get the lemon flavor right without having a sauce that is too sour. So I reduced the amount of lemon juice and added the lemon peels which give a burst of lemon flavor without the acidity. You also would want to use a white wine that is not very acidic and has some residual sugar (but by no means a sweet wine).
This dish is also great with veal instead of chicken and if you use sage instead of the lemon, you end up with a very classic Italian dish: Saltimbocca!
Ingredients
- Chicken Breast - 2 large, boneless, skinless
- Prosciutto - 4 slices
- Lemon - 1, organic
- White Wine - 1 cup
- Heavy Cream - 1/4 cup
- Olive Oil - 1 tbsp
- Butter - 1 tbsp
- Salt, Pepper
Instructions
- Wash and clean your chicken breasts under cold water and pat dry.
- Put the chicken breasts flat onto a cutting board and slice them into two pieces parallel to the cutting board, using a very sharp knife. Use a meat pounder to gently flatten the pieces.
- Pepper generously and add less salt than you would normally and attach a slice of prosciutto to each piece of chicken and fix with two toothpicks.
- Add a pan over medium heat and add the olive oil. Put the chicken in, prosciutto side down first and gently sear for two minutes. Flip and sear for another two minutes on the second side.
- Add the butter and about 1 tbsp of lemon juice as well as the lemon peel and let simmer for 2 minutes.
- Add the white wine, give it a gentle stir and add the lid to the pan, so you have a closed system. If you don't have a lit, just use a plate or some foil to cover the pan. Let simmer for about 10 minutes. The chicken doesn't take much time to cook through, because it's fairly thin.
- Remove the chicken from the pan and set aside. Stir in the heavy cream and increase to medium high heat to reduce the sauce until its nice and creamy. Adjust salt and pepper once it has reduced, otherwise you might end up with an overly salty sauce.
- Once the sauce has reached the desired thickness, kill the heat, remove the lemon peels, add the meat back in and cover for another 5 minutes.
- Serve over pasta or risotto and enjoy with a nice glass of white wine.
