OCTOBER 2021
PAGE 20
DINING
How To Make Classic Chicken Marsala at Home With these two classic cooking techniques, creamy chicken Marsala is always on the menu. Nothing says fast and fancy quite like the Italian-American dish of chicken Marsala. A menu staple no matter the restaurant, this dish has seen its fair share of revisions. No matter the update, the pairing of golden, pan-fried chicken with a mushroom-studded Marsala wine sauce hasn’t changed. We’re throwing our hat in the ring with a version we just can’t stop swooning over. With creamy sauce spiked with lots of garlic and, of course, the namesake Marsala wine, this take on chicken Marsala is next-level good. And while it might sound like a dish that requires hours of cooking, it is actually a super-fast, one-pan chicken dinner that is perfect for weeknight cooking. You can serve the chicken and Marsala sauce over angel hair pasta (just like your favorite Italian restaurant), over cauliflower rice, or, my favorite, with a simple Caesar salad. How to Make Creamy Chicken Marsala at Home Cooking creamy chicken Marsala at home relies on two classic cooking techniques: pounding the chicken into thin pieces for quick pan-frying, and making a pan sauce from the cooked mushrooms with the Marsala wine. Partnered together and paired with the right ingredients, creamy chicken Marsala at home is a stunningly simple supper staple. mushrooms. They will give off a bit of liquid as they cook, so scrape the lovely browned bits off the bottom of the pan as you stir the mushrooms. Add the garlic at the end of cooking the mushrooms.
A Step-by-Step Guide for Creamy Chicken Marsala at Home • Pound chicken breasts into thin, even pieces: Pounding the chicken breast into thin, even pieces is important because it makes it more tender and thinner, which means it cooks up faster and more evenly. There are many ways to flatten the chicken, but I prefer a gallon zip-top bag and a heavy rolling pin. You can also ask your butcher to do the pounding for you.
• Make a pan sauce with the mushrooms and Marsala: Making the pan sauce is as easy as adding the Marsala wine and a bit of chicken broth to the pan and letting the excess flour from cooking the chicken thicken the sauce.
• Coat the chicken in a little flour, and brown in oil and butter: The flour helps brown the chicken, but it later plays an important role in thickening the pan sauce. Browning the chicken in oil and butter gives the chicken tons of flavor and color.
• Finish the chicken in the sauce and serve: Once the pan sauce is simmering, return the chicken to the pan to meld the flavors. I love to temper the Marsala’s sweetness with some chopped fresh parsley and a juicy squeeze of lemon over the chicken before serving.
• Remove the chicken to a warm oven: Once the chicken is browned, move it to a warm oven. This continues to cook the chicken while you use the same pan to make a pan sauce.
The Best Way to Tenderize Chicken for Chicken Marsala Beating the chicken into tender submission is essential to chicken Marsala. It ensures the chicken cooks up faster and more evenly and makes the chicken breasts more tender. Flattening is a technique I used to bemoan as messy and bothersome — most recipes recommend sandwiching the breasts between flimsy sheets of plastic to contain the chicken’s juices and protect the flattening implement. My plastic wrap would always slide away or, worse, tear into pieces and stick to the chicken. Then I learned a game-changing trick: Put the chicken inside a gallon zip-top bag (freezer-grade if you’ve got it) and pound the chicken in the bag! This small change makes flattening chicken easier and cleaner than the plastic-wrap method, and can also be used for coating the chicken in flour. There’s a small amount of waste, but the cleanup is so much easier. As for the mallet for flattening? I don’t own one, so I use my French rolling pin. A heavy skillet, a can of tomatoes, or even an empty liquor bottle can be used in place of a mallet. If you do own a meat mallet, be sure to use the flat side for this maneuver.
• Brown the mushrooms in same the pan: Don’t clean the pan before adding in the
