Pan sauce

I almost forgot. After browning the pepper jack, taco seasoned chicken, we tried to make a pan sauce. We were excited to try this for the first time without a recipe telling us to do it. Cooks Illustrated June 2003 has a "Pan Sauces 101" article. We followed the vermouth-tarragon recipe and substituted yellow onion for shallot. We also had to use dried tarragon instead of fresh.

In our haste we skipped 2 important steps: 1) Discard excess fat - the end result was too greasy. And 2) Return juices to skillet - while the meat is resting elsewhere on a plate, juices are released. We didn't notice this until after we'd made the sauce. We probably would have reduced it again with the new liquid.

A good experiment and we look forward to trying it again.