Wegmans Pan-Seared Chicken with Peach & Chive Pan Gravy

Hey, guys, Chef Mark here. I'm gonna make for you
a pan-seared chicken dish, although we're gonna put
sort of a sweet and savory twist on it, if you will.
I'm gonna use a lemon-garlic marinated chicken breast.
This is vacuum tumbled, so the flavor really penetrates it.
One of the components to our dish is actually gonna be this sauce.
So we need to get a base for that.
We're gonna use this home-style gravy,
as shown here. We're gonna find this chef-developed
in our prepared foods department. All right, the last thing you
need to grab is that sweet element to the dish.
These just-picked peaches are gonna be frozen
at the peak of perfection. It's gonna be the perfect flavor
contrast to our home-style gravy that goes with this.
Got everything I need, so let's go cook.
All right, we're here to make the pan-seared chicken breast
with the peach gravy. So I'm gonna have
a hot pan here. We have it on about
a medium-high heat. We're gonna add about one
tablespoon or so of pure olive oil. We're not using an extra
virgin olive oil here. We want a higher
smoking point to that. What I'm gonna do is
I'm gonna take my chicken breast after I look
for this to turn, you know, faintly smoked.
The oil's gonna look a little bit more watery.
I'm gonna put my chicken breast directly inside the pan.
And I'm gonna put it directly on top of the oil.
Gotta make sure you put it on top of the oil because that's
gonna keep it from getting too brown on the bottom.
The oil's gonna act as sort of gentler medium of carrying
over the heat on that. Once I have my chicken
breasts inside there, I'm gonna turn that down
to medium heat. And we're gonna let that
rise opaque up the sides about a quarter of the way
up the sides. All right, now the chicken
has gotten brown on the bottom. If you look on the sides here,
it's come about quarter of the way up the sides,
and that's probably good indication where it's about
ready to turn. But I want to make sure
that you really get that nice browning on the bottom
of that. That's important step of this.
You want to make sure that we get that browning because that's
ultimately where all of our flavor is.
Now this is gonna cook for maybe another five, ten minutes.
We're gonna wait for it to come up to 165 degrees,
and that's when it's done. But while that's going on,
I might as well chop the chives. So in order to cut these,
actually line these up. When you cut a chive,
you want to make sure that you only cut these
one time. Don't go and chase them
all around the board. Get a nice, sharp knife.
Line them up even. And I'm gonna cut these
just the one time. This way we keep a lot
of that nice, fresh, green, grassy flavor
on the inside of the chive. If you bang it around on
the board and chase it around, a lot of times you get that
little green spot on your board. Well, that's all your
flavor going away. All right, so here let's
check our chicken breasts, which should be about done.
What I want you to do is put this thermometer
in the thickest part of the chicken breast.
You want to make sure if it's--if you get something
you're cooking that's really thin, actually go
in the side, so you're directly in the middle,
the thickest part. And 165 is what we're
looking for. Perfect.
And also what we want to keep in mind some food safety.
So any of your tongs and plates you had your raw chicken breast on,
we're gonna switch that out for a clean pair of tongs
and a clean platter. Gonna take those chicken
breasts off. And now any good chicken dish,
we need a great sauce with it. So we're actually gonna take
the existing fat that's maybe left in the bottom of the pan
and add a couple of shallots. Chopped shallots is
a mild red onion. And we're gonna
put that in there. And we're actually gonna cook
that, let those shallots just soften maybe a minute or two.
It's actually gonna start to pick off a little bit of that fond,
those brown bits on the bottom of the pan.
Leave that in there. That's all good flavor.
And then what we do is we're gonna take half a package,
turn our heat to about medium high,
half a package of our frozen peaches that we've thawed.
We're actually gonna cook these and stir these guys up a little bit.
And we're actually gonna let those caramelize.
It might take three, four, five minutes or so.
We're actually gonna start to brown those with a little
bit more complex flavor rather than just the sweet peaches.
We're actually gonna have those caramelize a little bit.
Let 'em brown in the pan, and then we're gonna
flip it over and continue the dish.
All right, my peaches are nice and caramelized here.
We developed some complex flavors in there.
Also gonna add about a quarter cup of white wine at this point.
And it does a couple things. We have some sweet peaches,
some nice brown bits on the bottom of the pan.
But now we're actually adding a little bit of acidity into the pan
to kind of contrast those sweet flavors in there.
But we're also picking up some of those brown bits
we have on the bottom of the pan.
Developing, kind of deglazing the bottom of that.
The sauce turns nice and brown at this point.
You're gonna let this reduce until those peaches turn
a little bit more brown and that liquid is almost all the way evaporated.
All right, once our wine is completely evaporated,
The peaches are browned nice,
all that's left is to add our gravy to this and get that warmed through.
And then, once that goes, we're gonna add our chives to this.
And basically all we're gonna do at this point is warm it
all the way through. Warm enough for me, all right.
Next thing we're gonna do is take our peaches and our sauce,
completely envelop our chicken breast over there.
All right, the sauce looks great on our chicken.
But--you know what?--if you felt like it, you could do a great
pork chop served with that peach gravy.
I think that would be fabulous.