Quick and Easy Hunter Style Chicken
By: Sheri Wetherell
Published: January 31, 2013

This Hunter Style Chicken recipe (also known as Chicken Chasseur) from Chef Marco Pierre White is a French classic, yet only takes about 15-20 minutes to make. Chicken is cooked up in a single pan with fresh herbs, tomatoes and mushroom, butter, a little brandy, a splash of white wine, and chicken stock. It works best using chicken pieces on the bone, which adds extra flavor, but chicken breasts may also be used. Watch the video below on how to prepare this delicious chicken recipe. It's what you'll want for dinner!


One of the great classics of French cuisine, Chicken Chasseur, otherwise known as Hunter Style Chicken in 15-20 minutes, very simple, chicken breast, shallots, chopped parsley, chopped tarragon, tomatoes, mushrooms, tomato juice with a little bit of gravy browning just for the color, not necessary, but it just gives it that richness, butter, and a bit of brandy and a little white wine and of course chicken stockpot.  Take our chicken and we flour it, no need to season, the stockpot will do that for you.  You may ask why I’m flouring it.  One, it gives it that nice golden brown color and secondly, just that little bit of flour assists with the thickening of the sauce.  You can remove the skin if you wish, but I’ll be very honest, I kind of like cooked skin.  I place my chicken skin side down, don’t want it too hot otherwise it’ll scorch the flour straightaway.  By cooking it slowly, one – I get the caramelization assisted with the flour but secondly, I’m rendering the fat within the skin which then makes the skin palatable.
Very few people these days flour their chicken  When I was a boy when I started many years ago, chicken breasts were always floured before they were pan fried.  And chicken chasseur was always a fricassee, it was cooked in a pan and the sauce made with it.  But you can see how golden the chicken is becoming now.  This is what the flour does.  Take our finely chopped shallots, make some room for them and so they go underneath, if I sprinkle them on, some of them wouldn’t be cooked, they’d be raw.  By pushing them tuned to the side, dropping them in the middle they’re allowing them to seep underneath.  They’re so fine they take seconds.  Now, the brandy, again when you deglaze anything with brandy or alcohol always around the edge of the pan because if you splash it over the chicken, the raw alcohol is staying on top of the chicken, around the edge of the pan it runs underneath.
As you can see I’ve turned it over, so therefore by the time my chicken’s cooked, it’s cooked evenly on both sides, a little white wine, again around the outside so there’s no raw alcohol on the chicken.  Taste the wine because I want the acidity removed so the natural sweetness and flavor of the wine comes through.  So you can see how shallots, chicken juices, white wine and brandy have all reduced down now into a concentrate and it’s quite syrupy.  So what I’m going to add now is my chicken stockpot just on the edge and I’m going to add my tomato juice and just slowly bring my sauce to the boil so the stockpot has now dissolved into the liquid, you can see the richness, very quick sauce, very easy.  In the other pan we’ll prepare our garnish in with our mushrooms, in with the parsley then we’ve got tomatoes, diced tomatoes with the skin removed.  Again, it’s about taking out the water out of the mushrooms to intensify the flavor.  I’ve got a generous amount of tarragon in with the chicken, sprinkle your garnish over just to finish with a sprinkling of parsley, and there we have a chicken chasseur in 15-20 minutes, very simple, foolproof.