Easy Skillet Chicken Recipe: Best You’ll Ever Eat!

Easy Skillet Chicken Recipe – This recipe is perfect for a blustery Friday night like the one we had yesterday.  We were (and still are as of this writing) smack in the middle of a slow moving nor’easter packing 70 miles an hour wind gusts.

With power outages everywhere in our area, I was lucky enough to have power restored yesterday just in time to prepare dinner.

 

Poulet au Maroilles

Sure, you can prepare this ch’ti recipe with a bit of chicken broth but the original recipe is prepared with a light beer. It is as regional a recipe as you can find in Picardie using a cheese –  Maroilles – that is considered a specialty of Northern France and the Pas De Calais.

Adapting A Recipe!

There is only one problem!  In Northern Virginia, I have yet to find the cheese for sale and believe me, I’ve been searching for it. Not even the high end specialty cheese shops in the Big Apple seem to carry it.  I  contacted the largest manufacturer and they came up empty as to information on importers! Time to do what I’ve done for years – adapt a recipe to the available ingredients while retaining as much of the original flavor as possible.

Finding The Perfect Cheese

 Tillamook Vintage Extra-Sharp Cheddar Cheese 2lb. I replaced the Maroilles with an equally stinky cheese.  Unfortunately, even a Pont L’Eveque does not have the unique flavor or even the same consistency as Maroilles which easily melts into a perfectly smooth cheese sauce. Forget the French cheese (for just a moment ? ) and consider cheddar as the ideal cheese for sauce. It would have to be an aged cheddar like this one to come close to the intense flavor you need to make a great cheese sauce for this easy skillet chicken recipe. I probably would have fared better using cheddar than the expensive Pont L’Eveque.  All-Clad T134 Stainless Steel Flat Whisk / Kitchen Tool, 13-Inch, Silver Aged cheddar will make a tasty sauce but you won’t have the unique flavor or pungent aroma of the Maroilles which can be aged anywhere from the basic two weeks to at least two months. Back home, it even has a moniker – the stinky old one – but I can find it in any market in all sizes and aged to perfection.  It is also the best cheese to eat with beer – one of the recipe ingredients! ? A flat whisk my kitchen tool of choice when making any sauce in a skillet but especially cheese sauces. It catches all the bits of cheese as you whisk in a circle across the bottom of the pan to incorporate them in the sour cream as quickly as possible into the liquid. Works just as well when I make the sour cream and mustard sauce for my Russian Beef Stroganoff recipe. Yes, I tweaked the basic recipe seasonings a little but kept the beer as an ingredient.  I always add a touch of something to make it mine.  It’s still an easy recipe with a minimum of ingredients.

[tasty-recipe id=”11173″]

• Hidden Culinary Treasures: The Trou Normand Recipe