White Wine Chicken with Lemon Basil

White wine chicken tastes so good & is easy to make on a weeknight, which both make this dish one of our staples.  Another great thing about it is this is really a base recipe than can be easily altered to your purposes and ingredients.  Sometimes I want lots of garlic chicken - so you use a whole head of garlic cloves, and cook these for 10-15 minutes in the sauce before adding the chicken back in.  Or you have great fresh spices like rosemary & thyme to add as seasonings.  This time our CSA box came with a bunch of lemon basil, which I had never had before, but had such a wonderful aroma.  It seemed that paired with white wine & chicken we couldn't go wrong - and it worked out fabulously!  We usually do white wine chicken with pasta or roasted fingerling potatoes.  Here we used a whole wheat thin spaghetti and served it with a salad of heirloom tomatoes & avocado dressed with olive oil, lemon basil, and balsamic vinegar.

White Wine Chicken with Lemon Basil


4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1-2 T extra virgin olive oil
2 teaspoons lemon pepper (or 1 teaspoon kosher salt + 1 teaspoon ground black pepper)
1 green onion or 1/4 c. white onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
3/4 cup dry white wine
3/4 cup chicken stock 
1 T corn starch
1/2 cup coarsely chopped lemon basil


1.  Clean & pat dry chicken breasts.  Trim any excess fat.  Season chicken breasts with lemon pepper or salt & pepper (both work fine, the lemon pepper is a salt & pepper mixture that has a lemon flavor to it).
2.  Heat olive oil over medium high heat in a large frying pan.  It is important that you have a lid for the pan you use!
3.  Brown chicken breasts on both sides. You are not trying to cook the meat through here - just brown them.  Remove the breasts from the pan (put these in a bowl or on a plate - they are going back into the pan in a few minutes) and reduce the heat to medium low.

4.  Add  onion & garlic to the pan.  Saute for 2 minutes.

5.  Add white wine & chicken stock to the pan.  Bring to a simmer.
6.  Return browned chicken breasts and any juices that have collected to the pan.  Reduce heat to low and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes.  You don't have to do anything to the chicken for the next 15 minutes, so this is a great time to cook a vegetable (green beans or broccoli?), make a salad, or sit back & relax.

7.  Remove chicken from pan & place on serving dish.
8.  To finish the sauce: mix corn starch with a few tablespoons of the liquids in the pan in a small dish, then stir into to the pan and cook on medium heat until the sauce begins to thicken.  Add lemon basil, and cook for 2 more minutes.  Serve sauce over chicken.