I love my skillet. It’s johnny-on-the-spot for quick meals that don’t heat up the kitchen, something we all appreciate during these overheated months of the year. Summer is not the time for braising — whether you do so in the oven or on a burner — but a family’s gotta eat! Grilling is great and I love it, but there are nights when it’s too hot, too rainy, or I am just plain too tired to venture outdoors and fuss with it. Ta da! Enter the skillet!
I like to pan-cook fish fillets, boneless chicken breasts, thin-cut pork chops, scallops, and ground beef or turkey. One of my favorite skillet meals is chicken with tomatoes and basil, perfect for this time of year. I start by heating a little olive oil to brown the chicken — which takes seconds — and then finish cooking it with additions of
chicken broth. Once the chicken is browned, I toss some chopped summer tomatoes into the pan, a squeeze of lemon juice and maybe a dash of soy sauce, a little ground pepper and finally, basil leaves from the garden. By now the chicken is done. Once it’s removed, I cook the pan sauce — what is left in the skillet — for a few more minutes, perhaps boosting its volume with some more broth and stirring it to blend all the good flavors. Spoon it over the chicken and your done. Delish!
Here’s a trick I learned recently regarding skillets and sauté pans. If you have a big one, one that measures 12 or more inches across, use it to cook pasta. The water comes to a boil quickly and you won’t be tempted to break the pasta to make it fit. Oh? the difference between a skillet and a sauté pan? Skillets have sloped sides; sauté pans have straight sides so that when the pans are shaken the food bounces off the sides and back into the pan. For quick skillet suppers they can be used interchangeably.
