What's For Dinner Wednesday: Chicken & Baby Bella Stroganoff

The next few days are about to get super busy.  Long days, late nights, and probably a lot of eating on the run.  With that in mind, I wanted us to enjoy a good homemade dinner tonight while I had some time to do so.

Alex loves beef stroganoff, but I try not to make it too often as between the beef and the sour cream sauce it can be a really heavy unhealthy dinner.  I did some digging though and found a great recipe for a lighter chicken stroganoff that-- with a few of my own tweaks-- sounded like a good compromise.  Subbing chicken breasts in for beef, light sour cream for full fat, and whole grain noodles for regular egg noodles really bumps up the health factor here.  I also chose to use sliced baby bellas instead of regular button mushrooms.  I'm not a big fan of mushrooms, but certainly prefer the meatier texture of the bellas so I chose to use those here.

 Ingredients:

• 1 Tbs. butter
• 1 medium yellow onion, diced
• 1 tsp. fresh thyme, finely chopped
• 1 tsp. dry sage 
• 1 1/4 tsp. salt, divided
• 1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper, divided
•  8 oz. sliced baby bella mushrooms
• 1/4 cup plus 1 Tbs. all purpose flour, divided
• 1 tsp. paprika
• 1 lb. boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1/4 inch strips
• 1 Tbs. extra virgin olive oil
• 3/4 cup fat free low sodium chicken broth, divided
• 2 Tbs. sherry
• 1 cup low fat sour cream
• 5 cups hot cooked whole grain wide egg noodles (about 8 ounces uncooked pasta)
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

Melt butter in a large nonstick skillet over medium high heat. Add onion and sauté 5 minutes or until tender. Add thyme, sage, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1/8 teaspoon pepper, and mushrooms to the pan.  Sauté 5 minutes or until mushrooms begin to brown. Spoon mixture into a large bowl and set aside.

Combine 1/4 cup flour and paprika in a shallow dish. Dredge chicken strips in flour mixture; shake off the excess flour mixture. Heat oil in pan over medium high heat. Add chicken; sprinkle with 1/4 teaspoon salt and the remaining 1/8 teaspoon pepper. Sauté 4 minutes or until chicken is browned and cooked through. Add chicken to mushroom mixture.

Add 1/2 cup of broth and sherry to pan, scraping pan to loosen browned bits. Reduce heat to medium low. In a small bowl, whisk together sour cream and flour until combined. Stir sour cream mixture and remaining 3/4 teaspoon salt into broth mixture. Add chicken mixture to the pan and cook 1 minute or until thoroughly heated. Add noodles and parsley; stir well to combine.  Depending on consistency of the sauce or how long the strogranoff sits before serving (as the sauce will thicken and dry out quickly), stir in any of the remaining chicken broth to thin out the sauce.

Derived from original recipe by Lia Huber, CookingLight.com