Add the olive oil and butter and place the chicken in the pan. Heat a large sauté pan or skillet over medium-high heat. Season both sides of the chicken breasts with salt and freshly ground black pepper.If you don’t have a pan big enough for all the chicken you are cooking, sauté the chicken in batches. In addition, if moisture does accumulate in the pan, you won’t have any of the delicious brown bits left in the bottom of the pan which forms the basis for the flavor of your pan sauce.
You’ll end up leaving the chicken in the pan for longer in the attempt to get some color on the chicken breasts and will spend more time sautéing than you’d planned, possibly overcooking the chicken. If you have too many chicken breasts in the pan and not enough surface area around each one, moisture from the chicken breast will accumulate in the bottom of the pan and that moisture will inhibit browning. Over-crowding might seem like a short-cut, but it never turns out that way. The first step of pan-searing the chicken is an important one.
A little minced shallot, fresh thyme and good-quality chicken stock add additional flavor. In this recipe, sherry is the acidic liquid that you use to deglaze the skillet and cream is the ingredient that will balance out the acid. The key to a good pan sauce is to balance the acidic ingredient with a little fat. It really couldn’t be easier and it is likely that you have all the ingredients you need for a good pan sauce in your kitchen already. The basics of a good pan sauce is to gather all the flavors left in the bottom of a skillet used for sautéing a piece of chicken, steak, pork or fish by deglazing with an acidic ingredient or liquid and simmering for just a few minutes until you have a sauce-like consistency.