Simple One-Pan Chicken Florentine recipe

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The Recipe: Simple One-Pan Chicken Florentine
This recipe is designed for clarity and simplicity, focusing on technique.

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes

Servings: 4

Ingredients You’ll Need:
2 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 1.5 lbs total), sliced in half horizontally to create 4 thin cutlets

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon black pepper

½ teaspoon garlic powder

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons butter

3-4 cloves garlic, minced

¼ cup dry white wine (like Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Grigio) OR chicken broth

1 ½ cups heavy cream

½ cup grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for garnish

5 ounces fresh baby spinach (this looks like a lot, but it wilts down!)

(Optional) Pinch of nutmeg

(Optional) Fresh parsley, chopped for garnish

Step-by-Step Instructions:

Prep the Chicken: “First things first, let’s get our chicken ready. Pat your chicken cutlets completely dry with a paper towel. This is a crucial step! A dry surface is key to getting that beautiful golden-brown sear. Now, season both sides generously with salt, pepper, and garlic powder.”

Sear the Chicken: “In a large skillet, heat your olive oil over medium-high heat. Once the oil shimmers, carefully place the chicken in the pan. Don’t overcrowd it; cook in batches if you need to. We’re going to sear these for about 3-4 minutes per side, until they’re golden brown and cooked through. (Pro-Tip for YouTube: Show a close-up of the golden crust!) Once cooked, remove the chicken from the pan and set it aside on a plate.”

Build the Flavor Base: “Look at this! All those browned bits left in the pan are called ‘fond,’ and that is pure flavor. Don’t you dare clean that out! Lower the heat to medium and add the butter to the skillet. Once it’s melted, add your minced garlic and cook for just about 30 seconds until it’s fragrant. Be careful not to burn it!”

Deglaze the Pan: “Okay, this is my favorite part—it’s called deglazing. Pour in your white wine or chicken broth. Use a wooden spoon or spatula to scrape up all those flavorful brown bits from the bottom of the pan as the liquid sizzles. Let it bubble for about a minute to cook off some of the alcohol.”

Create the Cream Sauce: “Now, turn the heat down to low and pour in your heavy cream. Whisk it all together. Let it gently simmer for a minute or two, then stir in your grated Parmesan cheese. Keep stirring until the cheese is completely melted and the sauce is smooth. A tiny pinch of nutmeg here really enhances the creamy flavor, it’s a classic trick!”

Wilt the Spinach: “It’s time for the ‘Florentine’ part! Add your entire pile of fresh spinach to the pan. It will look impossibly full, but trust the process. Gently stir it into the sauce. Within 1-2 minutes, it will wilt down to almost nothing.”

Bring It All Together: “Finally, return the seared chicken and any juices from the plate back into the pan. Nestle the chicken into that glorious, creamy spinach sauce. Let it all simmer together for another minute so the chicken can soak up all that flavor. And just like that… you’re done!”

Serve it Up: “Serve this immediately. It’s incredible over pasta, rice, mashed potatoes, or even with some crusty bread to sop up that amazing sauce. Garnish with a little extra Parmesan and some fresh parsley for a pop of color. Look at that—a restaurant-quality meal made in your own kitchen.”

“So there you have it! Simple, elegant, and insanely delicious Chicken Florentine. If you make this, be sure to tag me on social media so I can see your beautiful creations. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and hit that notification bell for more easy recipes that make you look like a pro. See you next time!”

Hello and welcome back to the chef’s backyard. My name is John. Tonight in this recipe, we are going to be cooking a chicken Florentine. If you want a dish that looks like it came out of a restaurant, if you want a dish that looks like a million bucks, then go ahead and watch this video. Make sure you like, subscribe, and uh and follow the instructions. It’s not that hard. It’s really easy. one of the things. So, Florentine. Usually, if you find a dish that says that it’s Florentine, it’s going to have some spinach in it, probably cream and cheese as well. So, this is chicken with cream cheese served over some pasta noodles. We’ve got some fetachccini. We’re going to do it in one pan. Do you think that’s possible? Let me know in the comments. And if you’re ready to cook, let’s go. One of the things that we talk about here in the chef’s backyard is misimplas. The concept of misimplas it simply means everything in place all of your prep work prepared before you before you start cooking. So let me bring you down to the cutting board and we’ll start cooking. So one of the first things we got to prep is our parsley. We’re doing an Italian parsley. Um I like to take that and kind of roll it up, bundle it like in a ball. This is going to be used for a garnish at the end of our recipe. We already sharpened our knife. I’ve got a pretty cool rolling sharpener. You can see it in some of my other videos. I’ll link it in the description box. But you want a sharp knife to be able to do this. We’ll set that back here. And we’re just going to rock the knife through all of this parsley. We’re using a pinch grip. Okay. So, we’re taking the knife and using the bottom three fingers on the handle, the first finger right here against the blade, and the thumb against the blade. And that’s called a pinch grip. That gives you a little bit more control of your knife, especially for doing some quick chops like this. In a restaurant, you’d be working this for probably about 20 minutes, sitting here and chopping and chopping and chopping and chopping and chopping to get a super fine uh garnish. You’d squeeze it between some tea towels, get all that green chlorophyll out, set it above an oven, let it dry out a little bit, dehydrate just a little bit. But for this dish, since it’s going to be so rich and creamy, really, we want that chlorophyll to come in and kind of cleanse our pallet and make sure that we’ve got a nice, beautiful dish. Uh, it’s up to you however much you want to keep on working this, but I’m pretty pleased with that, especially for this home cooking. My family’s hungry. We’re going to go ahead and put that in our dish over here. [Music] Now, for the next step, you can either use some of those chicken breasts that are Let me go ahead and take you in. You can use the chicken breasts that are already split or you can do a chicken breast like what we have over here. Let me go and wipe my cutting board down. You see this little mat? This mat is going to help to keep the cutting board from sliding around. Give it a press and now you’re locked in. Some chicken breast here. And these guys, these are full on this one actually has this one actually has a wishbone in there. Wow. Check that out. Check that out. So, what we’ll do is we’ll make sure that we cut that guy out and we’ll just slide our knife right along there and we’ll get rid of that bone. that is uh that’s something that somebody can choke on. So, you want to make sure that you get rid of that. Okay, we’re going to throw it in the trash. If you leave it over here, it can become a physical contaminant, and we don’t want that to happen. Okay. All right. So, check out this chicken breast. It is thick. We can split that guy in half. Now, there’s a little bit of fat right here. We can remove that. A little bit of fat down here. Can remove that. Clean it up a little bit. Now, a lot of times the way that we’re going to split this breast, here’s the tenderloin. We’re going to split it this way. So, let me show you how to do it. We’re going to pull it back here, back to the edge of the cutting board, so that just the knife is there. Place your hand down and run your blade through. Now you can do you can do a little split breast like that. That would be real pretty, right? Or you can run it all the way through. Choice is yours. It’s your food. Cook it the way that you like. So, we’ve got a couple of chicken breasts there. Let’s do one more. Just like that. We’ll do another one. Make sure you check in that area up here around the collar. Make sure you don’t have a bone in there. Pull it back. We’re going to split that guy all the way through. All right. So, now we’ve got our chicken for our dish. I’m going to change my gloves. [Applause] So, now we’re going to season our chicken breast. I’ve got some garlic and onion here. Garlic and onion powder. We’ve got some salt. [Applause] We’ve got some pepper. [Applause] We’ll turn those guys over and we’ll do the same. We’ll do that garlic and onion powder. Salt and pepper. [Applause] And if you want to, since you’re doing a cream sauce, you can go ahead and do a white pepper. and that way that black pepper doesn’t show up. All right, so we’ve got our chicken there. Let’s go ahead and move that. And now what we’re going to do is we’re going to start our cooking process. Okay, our pan and our cook surface. Let’s go ahead and turn on our heat. So, we’ve got our fire. Let’s set it to medium. There’s high. There’s like a low heat. Let’s set it to medium. We’re going to add this in. Let your pan get hot. 2 to 3 minutes. Okay. We’re going to need butter. On your stick of butter, there are guides to show you how much butter you’re using. Let’s do two tablespoons. We’ll do two tablespoons of butter. [Music] Let’s do some olive oil. About the same. One of the things. So, olive oil and the mixture of butter are going to help each other out. The olive oil is going to keep the butter from burning. [Music] So now let’s add our chicken. And we’re going to let those cook for just a couple of minutes. So, while that’s cooking, let me give you a little bit of history. The royal roots of chicken Florentine. The story goes that the noble woman Katherine Demedichi married King Henry II of France in 1553. She brought her own Florentine chefs with her to the French court. She also brought along her love for certain ingredients, most famously spinach. Her chefs began creating dishes for the royal court that predominantly featured spinach, often in a creamy sauce. We’ve got our cream right here. And this was to honor their Catherine’s home city. These dishes were dubbed Allah Florentine or in the style of Florence. So whenever you see a dish called Florentine, you can almost guarantee it will feature two key ingredients, spinach and a rich and creamy sauce. So, some other things that you can do instead of doing chicken, why don’t you do a Florentine pasta bake? Go ahead and prepare the sauce and chicken, dice it up, toss it with cooked pasta, like a pin or a rietoni, and place it in a baking dish. Top with mozzarella and bake until bubbly. You could do a stuffed chicken florantine. Create the creamed spinach filling first. Use a little less cream to make it thicker. Butterfly the chicken breast. Pound and thin. Stuff with the filling. Roll it up. Secure with toothpicks. And then bake it or pan sear until it’s cooked through. Served with a simple lemon butter sauce or do a florentine skillet. Sauté storebought in a golden butter until golden. Then remove, make the florentine sauce, and toss the chicken noki back in. Maybe you could do some sort of soup with it. Who knows? You’re the chef. All right, so let’s take a look at these. It’s been a couple of minutes. Ooh, look at that. How pretty. See how that’s all golden brown? So, here we are. Right, guys? We are just cooking. What do you think so far? Is this a weekn night dinner or not? The steps are simple. I think I I feel like I added a little too much oil and uh butter in there. So, we can we can always remove that, capture it in a little dish on the side, and then we’ll we’ll uh start making the sauce. All right, guys. So, this chicken breast is at 180°. We’ve got golden brown. We’ve achieved golden brown on both sides. We’ll set it over here on a plate. We’ll spread these other guys out. We’ll put the thick side towards the center of the platter. That’s where the heat is. And we’ll let it rock. We got 140 in that one. 130 in this one. 130 in this one. We’ll let those cook just a little bit more. Could even flip them if you like. So far, we got some beautiful golden brown going on. I’m super pleased with the way that this looks. What do you think about that first one we took out? I think it looks great. All right, we’ve got 162 on this guy. You’re going to get carryover cooking. That’s a real thing. Let’s go. Just another couple of minutes. And are you getting hungry? I know I am. This smells great. Now, so far it’s been really easy, right? There was nothing difficult about the preparation. We chopped up some parsley. We seasoned the chicken. Well, we split it. We found that little bone and removed it. Made our food even safer. And then now we’re just cooking it in some butter and some olive oil. Not too shabby, huh? Give it one more turn. All right, guys. There’s our chicken. And it’s all at about 155°. 155. Well, we’re going to add it back into the pan. Remember, I told you we wanted to kind of remove some of that oil, some of that butter. You can either do a little one like this, or you can do a big old bowl. Choice is yours. For safety, I’m going to go ahead and do this croc. And we’re going to go ahead and remove that oil. Now, we’re going to start to delaze. We’re going to add a little bit of that oil back. At this point, you could add onions if you like. Right now, I’m going to add some pog grigio. We’re going to do about a cup. But this is where you want to work your spoon and remove that fond. Let’s get that camera back in there. Here I’ve got a spatula and we’re going to pick up all of those brown bits that we got from the butter and the chicken and the spices. We can take some of that butter and oil that we had and we’ll add it back in. This is going to help you with washing your dishes, but it’s also a huge flavor component. Right? If you remove the fond, man, you’re just going to add so much flavor. Now, if you really want to, you could add some chicken bullion or some chicken bullion powder at this point. But what I want to do is I want to keep concentrating these flavors. So, I’m going to add my spinach. Doesn’t that look like a lot of spinach? Don’t worry, it’s going to wilt. It’s going to go away. And this is going to kind of cool the pan off a little bit. Let it cook. Let it do its thing. Right. So, the steam is cooking down the spinach. It’s wilting it. That didn’t take long. Just a few seconds. We can add in our cream. We’re going to do probably about a cup of cream. Now, we’re starting to build our sauce. Oh, man. Can you see that steaming? Oh yeah. Keep stirring. Keep stirring. Keep stirring. Look how much that spinach wilted. Let’s add a little bit of nutmeg. Nutmeg. This is going to kind of mimic the concept of besamemell is your first white cream sauce. Join my cooking school, guys. We’ll talk all about it. I’ll teach you. I’ll teach you the mother sauces. If you want to learn, maybe you don’t want to go and cook in a kitchen, but maybe you just want to learn more about the culinary arts, join my cooking school. I’ll link it in the video. Now, we’ve got some little linguini. This comes from our our grocery store from the deli. It’s a little package. We’re going to go ahead and put that in there. There’s enough moisture and heat in there that it’s going to cook this through. We’re still on medium heat. If that’s too aggressive for you, you can turn it down to low. We’ll go ahead and flip each one of these little pasta noodle nests over because the bottom side is already starting to soak up that liquid. We’re trying to break them down a little bit. Oh man. Hi guys. We are doing chicken florentine and we’re going to add a little fetuccini in there. We’re doing a nice cream sauce. I’m going to take my chicken, put it back in there. Look at all of that liquid. That liquid is flavor. We’re going to put that in there. We’re going to turn the heat off and we’re going to cover it with a lid. We’ll be back in about 7 minutes. All right, guys. So, we had a little bit of a rest. Let’s go ahead and remove that cover. Got some beautiful steam going on. Let’s move some of that chicken over. We’ll go ahead and move this around in this. Oh my goodness, that smells so good. We’ll go ahead and break these noodles up. They’ve they’ve uh pulled in all of that sauce. [Music] We’ll go ahead and do that. Then we’ve got our chicken. Let’s see. Let’s do that one more time. All right. So, let’s grab our pasta. Make sure that we mix some of that beautiful sauce and spinach in there. We’ll put it in the middle of our plate. We’ll grab our chicken. We’ll grab some of that spinach. Let’s move this back. All right, guys. So, here we have our chicken florantine. Let’s go ahead and top that with some Parmesan cheese, man. How does that look? Whoops. How does that look? I think it looks pretty good. This is plate number two. Go ahead and hit that with some Parmesan. Let’s cut into this. Let’s take a bite. All right, guys. Let’s try this chicken florantine. Here you go. Here’s the bite. How about that? Looks delicious to me. Oh man, that is rich and creamy. The pasta kind of pulls up that sauce. The spinach gives you a little bit of a clean, cleansing uh green note. Delicious. I hope you enjoy this dish and I hope to see you soon here at the chef’s backyard. And then we’ll add a little parsley on top. And there you have it, guys. Chicken Florentine. I hope you enjoy this dish. And thank you for joining me here at the chef’s backyard.