Easy White Wine and Mushroom Sauce for Chicken – Chasseur Sauce

This sauce is actually a very old and very famous French sauce, called a Chasseur sauce, which translates as ‘hunter’s sauce’ – but you might as well know it as ‘easy but tasty white wine and mushroom sauce for chicken’ because that is a much better (and less intimidating) title for it.

This sauce goes well with any kind of chicken and will transform boring chicken breasts into something very tasty and more than a little elegant.

White Wine and Mushroom Sauce for Chicken (Chasseur Sauce)

• ¼ lb of white mushrooms, sliced
• Half of a small onion, finely minced (or better yet, one large shallot minced, if you’ve got it)
• A couple of good Tbls of butter
• 1 cup of chicken stock, preferably homemade. If using canned stock, it must be low sodium* (veal stock is also traditional…if you’ve got any on hand…)
• 1 cup of dry white wine
• A couple of Tbls of minced fresh parsley
• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Heat a heavy skillet over medium and add 1 Tbls of butter. When the butter is hot, add in your sliced mushrooms and sauté, stirring, for about 2 minutes.
2. Add in the minced onion or shallot, and continue to cook for another 2 minutes, stirring to ensure that the onions do not burn
3. Pour in the wine and let it come to a gentle boil – boil until it has reduced by half.
4. Pour in the chicken stock and let it come to a boil once again. Boil gently until the mixture has thickened to a sauce like consistency, about 10-15 more minutes.
5. Once thickened, to give the sauce a richness, sheen and great buttery taste, whisk in the remaining one Tbls of butter
6. Season with salt and pepper to taste and sprinkle your parsley over the top

* Because you will be reducing the chicken stock a great deal when making this sauce, it’s important to start out with something that’s unsalted or minimally salted. A rich homemade stock is best, but a low sodium canned stock will also work.

Note – if you’re in a hurry or the sauce isn’t thickening up to your liking, you can accelerate the thickening process by mixing together 1 Tbls of butter and 1 Tbls of flour into a paste, and whisking this into the bubbling sauce – this will immediately thicken it. This is called adding a beurre Manie.