Chicken breast filets cooked in an amazing creamy sauce with flavorful mushrooms—that’s really the essence of the simple and delicious dish the French often cook at home.
Called poulet à la crème aux champignons in French, this recipe is among the many poultry dishes we love in France. Other favorites include Southwest France Basque chicken or whole Sunday roast chicken baked in the oven with potatoes and garlic (and sweet potatoes for me) or a delicious herb butter.
In this post
Focus on Champignons de Paris button mushrooms
Champignons de Paris might be the most commonly consumed mushrooms in France.
Champignons de Paris has a story closely linked to Paris’ history. They were first cultivated in Parisian suburb carriers and undergrounds, such as the catacombs, where the darkness, temperature, and humidity were perfect. Only a few producers remain in the Paris area. They are now mainly cultivated in the Loire Valley. Be careful when buying champignons de Paris in France; most now come from Poland!
Mushrooms are often used in French home cooking. We make creamy soups, comforting omelets, autumn tarts, and wonderful sides baked in the oven or sautéed in a pan…
Recipe at a glance
Sauté chicken breast filets cut in pieces and set aside. Sauté onion and garlic, then mushrooms. Add flour, whole-grain mustard, and cream, stir, and put the chicken back in. Cook over medium-low heat.
Information on the recipe
Chicken
Use chicken breast filets. You can leave them whole or cut them in half, in strips, in cubes… The bigger the pieces are, the longer the dish will need to cook.
So it all depends on the final look of the dish you want or the time you have. Here, I’ve cut chicken breasts lengthwise into large strips, thus in 4 pieces each. I also remove the skin.
You can replace the chicken with turkey or choose chicken thigh. Then, you will need to add more stock and cook for a longer time, covered. Plus, I would recommend adding cream only at the end.
A tablespoon of flour is added to thicken the sauce. It can be added at two moments : coating the chicken breasts before frying or at the end before pouring the cream.
Mushrooms
Any variety of mushrooms is fine: button mushroom, cremini mushroom, white mushrooms, ceps…, but the easiest to find (and cheapest) in France is to buy champignons de Paris button mushrooms.
We can find white and brown champignons de Paris. The brown ones are generally more firm than the white ones.
No need to peel them. Cut the bottom of the base and brush the mushrooms to remove any ground or sand. If necessary, briefly rinse them under tap water without soaking them and dry them with a paper towel or linen.
Cut them in slices or 2 or 4 depending on their size before adding them to the dish.
My tip to enhance flavors even more: add a handful of dried ceps!
Cream
It’s better to use crème fraiche, heavy cream, or half-and-half rather than liquid cream. In France, we often use 30% fat crème fraîche in this kind of dish.
Flour
Adding a tablespoon of flour is optional, but it will thicken the sauce a bit and give it a nice creamy texture.
Whole-grain mustard
My trick for giving the sauce a kick is to add a tablespoon of moutarde de Dijon à l’ancienne whole-grain mustard. We call this mustard Moutarde à l’ancienne which means old style mustard or moutarde en grains meaning grainy mustard.
It’s optional, but I recommend trying it. Dijon mustard is also fine, I would only add a teaspoon if it’s a strong mustard.
With or without wine or broth?
In many French chicken recipes, you are suggested to deglaze the pan with wine (most often white wine), just after sautéing the garniture aromatic (onion, garlic, sometimes also carrot, celery…) and the meat.
Of course, it adds nice flavors to your dish, but I promise, it is absolutely optional.
First, you must choose good-quality wine because cheap, bad-quality wine might ruin your dish. Then, if you don’t want to open a bottle of wine just for cooking or you don’t want to use good wine in your cooking, that’s totally fine.
To be honest, I never use wine when cooking meat unless I cook coq au vin or a beef bourguignon, where red wine or white wine is with the poultry the star of the dish. I replace the wine with water or broth (chicken or vegetable stock). And it’s perfect, believe me.
That’s why, in the ingredient list of this recipe, you won’t find wine. But if you’re used to it, feel free to deglaze with white wine.
It’s the same thing with broth. I personally don’t add broth in this recipe; I prefer extra cream. But if you wish to have a lighter dish, you can reduce the amount of cream a bit and add 1/2 cup—125 ml of chicken or vegetable broth.
Chicken with Mushrooms and Cream Sauce
Ingredients
- 4 chicken breast filets without skin
- 2 onions or 4 shallots, peeled, minced
- 2 cloves garlic
- 500 gr mushrooms champignons de Paris button mushrooms, washed, sliced
- 250 gr crème fraîche ,30% MF or heavy cream
- 4 tablespoons butter
- 1 tablespoon flour
- 1 tablespoon whole-grain mustard moutarde à l'ancienne
- salt
- pepper
Instructions
Start by preparing ingredients
- Peel and mince the onions and garlic cloves.
- Cut the base of the mushrooms and brush them. Eventually, wash them briefly under tap water without soaking, and dry them with a paper towel. Then slice mushrooms or cut themin 2 or 4 depending of the size.
Start cooking chicken and mushroom separately
- Cut chicken breast fillets into large strips lengthwise or cubes. Season on all sides with salt and pepper. Lightly coat with flour. Tap ro remove any excess of flour.
- Heat 1/3rd of the butter in a pan and briefly fry chicken on both sides until golden. Remove chicken and set aside on a plate.
- Add the remaining butter in the pan. Sauté the minced onion and garlic seasoned with salt and pepper for a few minutes.
- Add mushrooms, and cook for 5 to 10 minutes.
Finish cooking
- Add the chicken back in the pan. Add the tablespoon of mustard and the cram. Combine.
- Cook over medium heat until the chicken is cooked through, but it should not boil.