Cream splitting when making pan sauce from fond.

[u/DANGEROUS_DAIRY]

Alright, I know there are a million variables, but I'm not a super beginner or anything and I dont know why this specific step is fucking up my sauce. Whenever I add the cream it just separates and gets chunky. uughhhh.

Pan fry chicken thighs w/ clarified butter.

REMOVE old butter, starting from bare pan w/ just fond.

Deglaze w/ garlic/shallot + bit of flour + wine. Then I add a bit of worcestershire/ dijon.

Cook off a bit. Make sure temp isn't too high.

THEN add cream, it separates at 0 seconds, I get grumpy. (looks like little chunkies)

1. I'm making sure there isn't any hot fat in the pan to curdle the dairy?
2. I'm making sure the temp in the pan isn't too high?

My suggestion would be to heat the cream before adding?

Or am I waiting for 5+ minutes for my pan to cool?

I don't know... I just cant seem to get the cream to not get all chunky and gross. When my mom makes pan sauce its so velvety and smooth and normal. Just so frustrating when you have such nice fond get fucked in front of your eyes x3 times over.

Any help super appreciated.

[u/jhorden764]

"Pan too hot / what's already in the pan is too acidic / old cream" are pretty much the three options of things going wrong in this situation.

Perhaps the combination of worcester and wine and dijon tips it over the edge with acidity if you're saying your pan isn't smoking hot? You could also look at using cooking cream or heavy whipping cream (depending on where in the world you are, it might be called something different or not exist in that form), which are more stable than "regular" cream and you have to work REAL hard to split cooking cream as it's already got emulsifiers in it.

[u/DANGEROUS_DAIRY → u/jhorden764]

Yea I think you're right, too acidic. Cook off the wine longer?

What would be your suggestion to add close to the beginning?

Trying again every night until I get it proper.. ahha.

[u/jhorden764 → u/DANGEROUS_DAIRY]

Yeah try cooking it out for a bit longer, it may help. But do see about types of cream as well, even if just to familiarize yourself with what you have available around you – as I said, some are more stable than others and you'd want to use tools that make your work easy and with the best outcome. :)

Otherwise it's all sounding great, you could also look at capers / anchovies or other bits like that instead of wine and worchester, always delicious with chicken. Also if you think about what flavors you get from worchester sauce you could omit that and just use some dry herbs and spices to get similar flavor profiles without the extra acidity.

Really a lot of things work with cream sauces – even just a pinch of smoked paprika kicks it up a notch. Play around!

[u/DANGEROUS_DAIRY → u/jhorden764]

Aye aye Cap, trying again!

[u/Ill-Delivery2692]

You need fat (butter) incorporated into the acid (wine) to prevent the cream from curdling. Whisk cold butter in, then slowly drizzle cream in while whisking.

[u/AdditionalAmoeba6358]

You may just have your pan too hot. Cream is something you want to bring up to temp more slowly. So cooling your cooking pan, AND getting the cream to room temp should help.

Rapid temp shocks will fuck with cream.