Maple-Balsamic Chicken

The idea to make chicken with balsamic vinegar came from my friend Amy. She had recently made Balsamic Honey Chicken Wings (post will come when I make it). I didn't have any balsamic vinegar in my pantry, so I went to the grocery store to get some. When I got there, I had the balsamic vinegar in my hand, but the bottle of Maple Balsamic caught my eye. So i grabbed that instead...When i got home, I wondered if i could make the chicken wings with maple balsamic, but then decided not to mess with Amy's recipe and look for someone else's recipe to mess with. I found a Maple Balsamic Chicken recipe, but I had to tweak it. The original recipe asked for the balsamic vinegar and maple syrup, not maple balsamic vinegar, but decided to try it out anyway. Here's what i did:



2 chicken breasts bone-in, skinless
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon paprika
3/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 can chicken broth
1/3 cup maple balsamic vinegar
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons smooth peanut butter
sugar for sauces, optional

1. Sprinkle chicken evenly with salt, paprika, and thyme.
2. Cook chicken in hot oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat 2 minutes on each side or until golden brown. Stir in chicken broth and maple balsamic vinegar and ground pepper, and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat to low, and simmer 15 minutes. Remove chicken to a serving platter, and keep warm. Reserve liquid in skillet.
3. Whisk peanut butter into reserved liquid, and boil over medium-high heat, uncovered, 5 minutes or until sauce is thickened; spoon sauce evenly over chicken. Taste the sauce, if it's too balsamic vinegar-ey, add a bit of sugar to balance it out.

I'm not a huge fan of chicken breast. They're often too dry. I prefer the leg. But simmering it in the chicken broth gave it some juice. I also divided the reserved liquid. I did one half with the peanut butter, and the other without. I know Kev is not crazy about peanut butter, so I had two sauces for the chicken. Since I didn't use pure maple syrup, as required by the original recipe, my sauce was more salty-sour, so I had to mix in some sugar into the reserve sauces. Kevin seemed to be ok with my experimental chicken. He didn't say it tasted weird. lol After tasting both sauces, I decided I liked the non peanut butter kind.