Poulet Sauté Lyonnaise

Poulet Sauté Lyonnaise (Lyon-style sautéed chicken) teaches timing before anything else. Slice the onions fine, colour them lightly in butter, then wait until the chicken is halfway cooked before they go back into the pan. Too early and they scorch before the joints are done; too late and they never melt into the fond. When it is right, the bird is bronze, the onions are supple and butter-gold, and the veal gravy catches both in a short, glossy liquor.

The original entry assumed a saucier nearby, a pot of veal gravy never off the fire, a broad sauté pan, and enough hands to colour onions while the chicken cooked. At home, use one heavy 12 to 13-inch pan, colour the onions first and hold them, then prepare the small measure of veal gravy from your own stock or a good concentrate. The entry's one-chicken ratio already suits four, so there is no honest reason to shrink it further. One cook, one stove, one evening.

The brigade scaffolding is the second pan and the extra hand to mind it, so that can go. What must stay is the butter, the light colour on the onions, their halfway entrance, and the quick veal reduction. The one step that decides Poulet Sauté Lyonnaise is adding the onions only when the chicken is half cooked, then lowering the heat before their sweetness turns bitter.