Best Holiday Recipes: Champagne Chicken

In my cooking adventures, I have so far made Champagne jelly and Champagne cookies. Even Champagne Marshmallows were a hit and fun to make -- They are easy to do and their recipe is at the end of this Hub.

I discovered that you can add Champagne to a chicken recipe just as you might add any other wine to a dinner entrée.

Christmas and New Year's, along with other winter holidays, often see bottles of Champagne in the house, even if you do not imbibe. Take one of yours and make these two chicken dishes and you'll have a delightful light dinner entrée and a very nice luncheon salad to try with guests and family.

Serves 6 Peeps

INGREDIENTS

• 6 Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breasts, or 3 large ones cut in half lengthwise
• 3 Green Onions, sliced thin - trim ends, slice all of the white portion and half of the green.
• 8 oz. Mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
• 4 TBSP Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 4 TBSP Butter
• 3 TBSP Tarragon
• White Pepper to taste
• 1/2 Cup of Champagne
• 1/2 Cup Heavy Cream
• 3 TBSP flour

INSTRUCTIONS

• On the stove top, place a large, heavy skillet over medium heat. Melt the olive oil and butter together.
• Add green onions, stir and sauté until just tender.
• Brown chicken breasts on all sides in the melted fats and onions and cook another 10 minutes.
• Remove chicken to a holding platter in a warm place.
• Deglaze the skillet with the Champagne and stir up all the cooked pieces.
• Add the cream and stir well; add white pepper, tarragon, and mushrooms and stir for 2 minutes reduce. If very thin yet, dissolve 3 TBSP flour in a little of the liquid in a cup and pour back in to thicken.
• Replace chicken and reduce heat to simmer until chicken is fully cooked and mushrooms are tender. Done!

Serves 6 with a meal-sized salad

INGREDIENTS

• 2 Small Heads of Butter Lettuce or other leaf lettuce
• 1 Cup Raw Baby Carrots
• 2 Green Onions, sliced thin - all of the white portion and half of the green.
• 1/2 Medium Red Onion, sliced thin.
• 2 Pounds of Boneless, Skinless Chicken breast halves, cooked
• 1/4 Cup of Champagne
• 1/4 Cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 1/2 tsp White pepper
• 1 tsp thyme
• Kosher salt
• 4 oz. goat cheese

INSTRUCTIONS

• On the stove top, boil the baby carrots about 3 minutes or until just crisp-tender.
• In a medium-sized bowl, pour Champagne, olive oil, salt, pepper, thyme and 1 tsp Kosher salt and mix well. Add all the onions to the bowl and stir.
• Slice chicken into wide strips crosswise and place into a shallow pan. Pour 1/2 of the Champagne mixture over the chicken and let sit 15 minutes to marinate.
• Tear lettuce leaves and place into a large salad bowl and toss with a fork as you add in the other half of the Champagne mixture.
• Divide salad among 6 plates. Top with chicken and pour remaining Champagne dressing over all.
• Crumble goat cheese over the top of each individual serving of salad and enjoy.

Chef and author Alton Brown once said that if chickens are related to pterodactyls, then let's reverse engineer them so we can have chickens with bigger hot-wings.

The possibility above looks a little tough to digest to me.

All you need is a bottle of Champagne, fruit pectin, some vinegar, and some sugar - and a pot to cook it in.

• In a pot on the stove top over HIGH heat, pour one bottle of Champagne, 2 TBSP white vinegar, and 4 Cups white sugar. stir until sugar is dissolved.
• Bring the mixture to a rolling boil and add one 2-oz. package of fruit pectin.
• Boil and stir for 60 seconds and then remove from the heat.
• Ladle jelly into up to 5 clean pint jelly jars (fill to within 1/2 inch of the rim), seal with the jar lids and cool to room temperature as jars sit on the counter. Refrigerate.

My bottle of Champagne was just beginning to turn to vinegar, so I did not have to add vinegar. The jelly came out as a light and delicious condiment.

Since we're down to the last chicken in the larder, let's make some Champagne Peeps for the holidays at Cranberry Marshmallows, Champagne Marshmallows.

If you are hungry for more fantastic chicken dishes, then please try some of these for any holiday celebration or an exciting dinner any night of the week:

• This is my favorite chicken salad, one that includes Black Walnuts And Grilled Chicken.You are sure to love this one. Black Walnuts are my favorite walnuts for their taste and texture.
• If you like Asian cuisine, this next dish is Thai, learned from my friends who moved here from Thailand. Try this recipe for Tom Kha Gai.
• Chicken Shortcake - A Hungarian Recipe You Might Not KNow -- This authentic recipe comes from a Hungarian community in Ohio. Their families celebrated holidays with good food and good company after WWII and they continue to do so today. .
• Chicken Little, Chicken Big
• How about a chicken pie that is not a chicken pit pie? -- This Chicken Pie Has Legs! This is a Depression Era favorite popular in the Midwest and South. I have two recipes here for chicken leg pie give you some new options for for meals.