Delicious chicken breasts, simmered in a decadent white wine and mushroom tarragon sauce, are a great simple meal. When served with your choice of starch, this recipe makes for an easy yet decadent dinner for 4.
For some more delicious chicken recipes like this, why not try making some Smothered Chicken? Or some Chicken Fricassee instead?
Creamy Mushroom Tarragon Chicken
Tarragon and chicken are one of those secret pairings that work incredibly well together, but you don’t often see it outside of restaurants.
With a little bit of some really dry white wine, some shallots, and a whole lot of cream, you can transform a simple chicken breast into something incredibly filling, nutritious, and delicious.
Make sure to serve it with a simple, easy starch to help pad out the meal, as you don’t want to overwhelm all of the delicate and delicious flavors in your chicken!
Creamy Mushroom Tarragon Chicken Ingredients
Make sure you look at the recipe card at the very bottom for the exact amounts so that you know exactly what to buy for this recipe.
• Chicken breasts, skinless and boneless
• Salt & pepper
• Butter
• Button mushrooms
• Shallots
• Garlic
• Flour
• Dry white wine
• Chicken stock
• Heavy whipping cream
• Fresh tarragon
• Lemon juice
• Salt & pepper
How To Make Creamy Mushroom Tarragon Chicken
• If the chicken breasts are really thick pound the chicken breasts with a meat mallet to a half-inch thickness and season them on both sides with salt and pepper
• In a large skillet over medium heat, melt the butter
• Add the chicken breasts and cook for about 5 minutes on each side until browned on both sides
• Remove the chicken from the pan and place it on a plate and then keep it warm in the oven
• Add the mushrooms and the minced shallot to the pan and sauté until soft
• If needed, add another tablespoon or two of butter to ensure you have enough fat to fry everything
• Add in the minced garlic and sauté until browned and fragrant, around 2 minutes
• Add the flour in, mixing and frying in the mixture
• Deglaze the pan with white wine, slowly pouring it into the pan and scraping the browned bits off with a wooden spoon – make sure to go slow to ensure that the flour doesn’t get too lumpy
• Add in the chicken stock, followed by the cream, and then stir until combined
• Add the tarragon, and then place the chicken breasts into the pan and spoon some of the sauce on top
• Place a lid on top of the pan and cook on medium heat until the sauce is slightly thickened
• The chicken is done once the internal temperature hits 165 Fahrenheit using an instant thermometer
• Stir in the lemon juice and season with salt & pepper to taste and serve on rice or mashed potatoes
What Kind Of Wine Should You Use For This Recipe?
Whenever a recipe features wine as one of the ingredients, there is always going to be an understandable amount of confusion surrounding the actual type of wine you should use.
There is sometimes this piece of advice that floats around that says that you should only ever use cheap, lower-quality wine, nothing that you would want actually to drink.
This invariably leads to people using things labeled as “cooking wine” at the supermarket, but whatever you do, don’t do this!
Cooking wines are usually filled with salt and taste pretty terrible and can actually completely ruin your dish!
In fact, the opposite advice is really true – you should only use a wine that you could imagine yourself drinking.
It doesn’t have to be a nice wine – it just needs to be palatable and not make you want to spit it out.
Something dry would be great for this recipe, anything that describes itself as particularly dry, and maybe a touch of fruity or citrusy as well.
The wine really just contributes a depth of flavor, as well as some acidity and sweetness, so the exact type doesn’t matter too much.
Just something dry and drinkable will do.
Could You Use Fancier Mushrooms In This Recipe?
This recipe calls for some simple and unassuming button mushrooms, both to provide that mushroomy taste and also to lend some umami intensity to the final dish.
There is always a temptation to go for slightly fancier mushrooms in recipes like this, especially when the mushrooms aren’t going to be diced totally small.
However, this is one of those few times where getting a more expensive and delicious ingredient probably isn’t worth it.
While you will certainly notice a bit more flavorful intensity if you use something expensive and tasty like a morel, it won’t really have that much of a gigantic impact on the final dish.
This is because the creamy, tarragon-rich sauce will simply overpower any delicate mushroom flavor you get from fancier mushrooms.
Though it might pain you to do it, stick to the cheap, regular mushrooms for this recipe. You just want their umami, plus a little bit of their mouth feel when you get a piece of mushroom on your fork, and that’s it.
Looking for more delicious Chicken recipes? Try these out:
• Mushroom Soup Chicken & Rice Casserole
• Bisquick™ Chicken and Dumplings
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Creamy Mushroom Tarragon Chicken
Ingredients
- 4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves
- salt and pepper
- 1/4 cup butter
- 1 pound button mushrooms cleaned
- 1 shallot finely minced
- 2 cloves garlic (finely minced)
- 2 Tablespoons flour
- 1/4 cup dry white wine
- 1 cup chicken stock
- 1 cup heavy whipping cream
- 1 Tablespoon minced fresh tarragon
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- If the chicken breasts are really thick pound the chicken breasts with a meat mallet to half an inch thick. Season on both sides with salt and pepper.
- In a large skillet over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the chicken breasts and cook 4-5 minutes on each side until browned.
- Remove the chicken from the pan and place on a plate. Keep warm in the oven.
- Add the mushrooms and the minced shallot to the pan and saute until soft. If needed, add another tablespoon or two of butter at this point to make sure you have enough to fry the ingredients in.
- Add in the minced garlic and saute until browned and fragrant, around 2 minutes. Add in the flour, mixing and frying in the mixture.
- Deglaze the pan with the white wine, slowly pouring the wine into the pan and scraping the browned bits off of the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon. Go slow and make sure the flour doesn’t get lumpy.
- Add in the chicken stock then cream and stir until combined, and add in the fresh tarragon.
- Place the chicken breasts into the pan in the sauce and spoon some sauce over them. Place a lid on top of the pan and cook on medium heat until the sauce is slightly thickened and the chicken is done when an instant read thermometer reaches 165 degrees.
- Stir in the lemon juice and season with salt and pepper to taste.
- Serve on rice or mashed potatoes, rice or as is!
Ryan says
I love tarragon so much that I add it to every meal I cook, even scrambled eggs, mashed potatoes, etc. Has anyone tried this recipe using a slow cooker or instant pot? I realize using an instant pot the cream would be added at the end of the cook time. I would appreciate anyone’s thoughts…Karlynn? Thank you.
Sheila says
Try lowering heat and bring lemon to room temperature.
Althea says
Your suggestion worked perfectly. Thanks again.
Althea says
This sounds so yummy! I have a problem with my sauce breaking when I stir in the lemon juice. Any suggestions? Thanks.