This Is The Sweet And Sour Sauce Your Chicken Needs

Chicken breasts are the front line protein of easy dinners, being quick, satisfying, and affordable, but they are not much without a great sauce. The fact is that no matter how perfectly you cook your chicken breast, their unadorned flavor is always going to be bland, and their leanness can easily give way to dryness without some help. There are a lot of good sauce options out there to do the job, whether it's a rich and tangy piccata or creamy mustard sauce. But sometimes you need to step away from the old favorites and really go to town dressing your chicken. And that is where our balsamic cherry sauce comes in.

As the headliner in our cherry balsamic chicken recipe, this sauce relies on the classic chicken pairing of sweet and sour, but with a fresh, fruity twist. The pitted and halved fresh cherries bring out the natural sweetness of balsamic vinegar, but it doesn't go overboard with the sugar, as chicken stock, shallots, and garlic even everything out with some savory flavors for a well-balanced sauce with tons of depth. Chicken needs as much flavor boosting it can get, and this sauce combines the salty, sweet, acidic, and umami. If there is a way to wake up your taste buds, this sauce has it.

Like a lot of the best sauces for chicken, this cherry balsamic recipe is quick, easy, and perfect for a weeknight meal. You start by sautéing shallots and garlic in a little olive oil, ideally in a pan you've already used to brown some chicken. You then add the cherries, a half pound for roughly a pound of chicken, and a half-cup each of chicken broth and balsamic vinegar all at once. 

The mixture only needs to cook for five minutes to soften the cherries, and melt the ingredients, and deepen the flavor through a little reduction. Then the sauce gets thickened with a cornstarch slurry and cooked for a few more minutes until it reaches a nice, glossy consistency. Season to taste and it's ready to be poured over your chicken.

And though this sauce was conceived of for sautéed chicken breasts, you don't need to limit the pairing to that. The sharp, sweet flavor would pair just as well with some juicy braised chicken thighs, or make a great topping for some shredded rotisserie chicken on a sandwich. You can even stick with chicken breast but opt for a battered and fried version to add some crunch and salt for a real flavor bomb. Like any great pairing this cherry balsamic sauce is one that deserves to be tried with every different way to cook chicken you can conceive of.