Lucille Ball Was Onto Something With This One-Pan, 30-Minute Dinner

Legendary actress Lucille Ball became a household name thanks to her comedic prowess on the television show "I Love Lucy." While most of it focused on her daily life as the wife of band leader Ricky Ricardo and the shenanigans she inevitably got up to with her best friend Ethel, there were many iconic food moments featured in the show. The most famous of them just might be the hysterically physical iconic scene where Lucy and Ethel work in a chocolate factory, wrapping chocolates while trying to keep pace (and failing to do so) on an assembly line. On-screen food antics aside, Ball was a willing cook, and one of her noted recipes was a chicken saute that still stands up today.

"I Love Lucy" was on the air for much of the 1950s to wide national acclaim, amassing a whopping 181 episodes. During its heyday, Ball regularly shared some of her favorite recipes with eager fans, and her chicken sauté with mushrooms and artichokes struck a chord. The dish features bone-in pieces of a whole chicken, which become tempting and crispy in the pan thanks to a light coating of flour, and are then lavishly surrounded by a sauté of onions, mushrooms, artichokes, and garlic cooked down with a bit of white wine.

While some of her recipes, like Sunday Supper goulash, might immediately ring vintage bells like other old-school chicken dishes from your grandparents' house, Lucille Ball's chicken sauté somehow feels as current today as it might have in the Fabulous Fifties. What's more, this chicken dish delivers on several fronts. It comes together in under 30 minutes, requires only one pan, and is incredibly tasty. These three distinctions make her satisfying chicken and vegetable dish one to add to the rotation, even on a night filled with carpool and homework.

By cooking the chicken in the pan first, it has time to rest while you render down the vegetables and deglaze with wine. It all then comes back together in the pan, along with a short stint in the oven, before hitting the table. Trying Lucille Ball's chicken dish will get dinner on the table so quickly that you may have gained back enough time to watch an episode of "I Love Lucy." Get ready to crack a smile while you eat, even if your companions balk at having to watch a TV show in black and white. If this chicken dish has you keen to try other quick meals (perhaps making time for more iconic sitcom watching), try these easy one-pot meals.