8 Tips You Need When Making Chicken Piccata
Chicken piccata is that special kind of dish that's easy to pull together with common pantry ingredients on a busy weeknight, yet elegant enough to serve for company. A variation of veal piccata, chicken piccata, is believed to have been created by Italian immigrants in the 1930s. It's simple to prepare and turns boneless, skinless chicken breasts, the workhorse of many kitchens, into something extraordinary. While perfectly seared chicken serves as the base of the dish, the sauce is the heart of chicken piccata. Freshly squeezed lemon juice, a splash of white wine, and chicken broth mingle together with butter and capers to create the trademark sauce that's a delicious blend of savory and citrus flavors.
Dredging, sauteing, and searing are just a few of the basic culinary techniques required to successfully prepare chicken piccata. I mastered these skills in culinary school and as a personal chef, when I prepared chicken piccata frequently for both my meal prep and catering clients. I've learned that even if your cooking chops are top-notch, you can easily derail your chicken piccata recipe unintentionally. These tips will help keep you on track for restaurant-worthy piccata perfection.
Assemble your mise en place before you start
Whether you're an advanced cook working in a fine dining restaurant or a beginner trying to get a meal on the table in minutes, there's one technique that can make or break your chicken piccata recipe. You might be surprised to learn this one simple but important step takes place before you even turn on the stove to cook your piccata. Before you start any recipe, chicken piccata included, it's imperative to learn the art of mise en place.
Mise en place is a French phrase that makes life in the kitchen much easier. It's the process of assembling and prepping all of the ingredients required for a recipe before you start to cook. No more chopping one ingredient while the other sautes and then having to take your pan off the heat because the chopping took longer than expected, or your phone rang and pulled you away from your recipe for a bit. Assembling your mise en place allows you to focus solely on cooking.
Making chicken piccata is quick work. Things move quickly once you start, so it's important to have all of your ingredients ready to hit the pan for best results. For instance, chopping the shallots and garlic while the butter melts may seem like a time saver, but the butter will likely burn before you're done. Having all of your ingredients ready to go gives you the best shot at getting your piccata just right.
Make sure the chicken is thin
Thin, crispy cutlets are the hallmark of chicken piccata. If it sounds a lot like another Italian-influenced dish, chicken scallopini, that's no coincidence. When it comes to chicken piccata vs. scallopini, scallopini is a broader term that refers to any thinly sliced meat or poultry. So, technically speaking, chicken piccata is a variety of chicken scallopini.
You can achieve piccata that's crispy and moist by buying pre-sliced cutlets or slicing or pounding regular chicken breasts until they're the right thickness. Larger chicken breasts are typically thicker at one end, making it difficult to cook them evenly. The thicker end will require a longer cooking time, and the thin end can easily be overcooked. Buying regular chicken breasts is usually less expensive than purchasing the cutlets, but you can turn them into cutlets by slicing them in half horizontally and using a meat mallet or rolling pin to pound them until they're thin. Whichever method you choose, your chicken should be about ¼-inch thick for perfect piccata.
Dredge the chicken in flour and breadcrumbs for the crispiest cutlets
One key step in preparing chicken piccata is dredging the chicken cutlets before adding them to a hot pan for searing. Dredging is the process of lightly coating food before it's cooked. Flour is the most commonly used ingredient for dredging. It helps give the chicken added color as it cooks, and when you're cooking chicken without skin, as with piccata, you need the browning boost the flour provides. Skipping this step will give you chicken without the golden brown, crunchy crust that we all expect when we cut into a piece of chicken piccata.
While flour on its own works well, if you really want to cook piccata with an extra crispy, beautifully browned crust, reach for the breadcrumbs in your pantry and add them into the mix. Both flour and breadcrumbs will produce brown chicken, but the added texture the crumbs provide will also give you exceptionally crispy chicken cutlets, perfect for serving with your piccata sauce. Any breadcrumb will work, but panko breadcrumbs yield the crispiest chicken with the most gorgeous color.
Choose the right pan
Choosing the right pan for cooking chicken piccata is an important step that can have a negative impact on your finished dish if you get it wrong. Pan size and the material it's made of are factors you should take into consideration before you start cooking. First, make sure the pan you select is large enough to accommodate both the chicken cutlets and your sauce. Once the chicken is browned, most chicken piccata recipes recommend adding the chicken back to the pan after you've built your sauce. This allows the chicken to absorb the sauce, giving it additional flavor. If a larger pan isn't an option for you, cook the chicken in batches to avoid overcrowding the pan, and pour the sauce over the chicken once it's plated.
A nonstick pan might seem like a great choice for making piccata as it will reduce the chances of the chicken sticking as it cooks. While you can brown food in pans with a nonstick coating, it can be more difficult. First, because most nonstick pans can't withstand the higher temperatures required to properly brown and crisp your chicken. A stainless steel or cast iron pan is a better option for cooking meats with a rich brown color.
Sear the chicken until it's golden brown
When you're making chicken piccata, it's not enough to cook the chicken until it's done. Yes, it's important to make sure your chicken is fully cooked to avoid any potential foodborne illness, but there's more to chicken piccata than just a cooked chicken cutlet. The chicken should also be beautifully golden brown. Searing the chicken properly is the best way to achieve this. Searing is a basic cooking technique that gives the chicken its color. No matter how much flour and breadcrumbs you dredge your chicken in, if you steam or even roast it instead of searing it, it will never brown appropriately.
Golden brown chicken not only makes your chicken more appealing, but it can also help you determine when the chicken is fully cooked. Because chicken piccata is made with cutlets, or thin pieces of chicken, they cook faster. In most cases, by the time they're golden brown, they're also fully cooked. When you're searing the chicken, be careful not to overcrowd your pan. Overcrowding your pan will cause the temperature to drop, and your chicken will steam instead of sear. Both the steam and the lower temperature will keep your chicken from searing properly.
Crumple the paper towels before draining the chicken on them
Once you've seared your chicken and it's properly browned, you'll need to remove it from the pan while you build your sauce. When chicken is seared in oil or a mix of oil and butter, it's important that any excess oil it has absorbed be allowed to drain. It may seem like the easiest way to do this is to place the seared chicken on a plate lined with paper towels. The oil drains from the chicken directly onto the paper towels. However, this is the paper towel mistake you should avoid. When the chicken is flat on the paper towels, steam can build up, and your chicken could end up sitting in a pool of oil once the paper towel is fully saturated. The result? Chicken cutlets that are crispy on top and soggy on the bottom.
Crumpling the paper towels up will protect your chicken from a soggy bottom. When the paper towels are balled up, they'll still absorb excess oil, but the uneven surface they create will allow air to circulate around the chicken, preventing steam from undoing your work.
Choose smaller capers
Capers give chicken piccata a bright burst of briny saltiness that perfectly balances the other flavors in the dish. They're typically used as a garnish in many dishes, but they are front and center in chicken piccata. If piccata is part of your usual recipe rotation, you should always keep capers in your pantry. Their salty, tart flavor is the perfect complement to the acidity the lemon juice and white wine bring to the dish. Though they may share shelf space with olives in the grocery store, capers are actually unripened flower buds of the caper bush. The buds are pickled, and capers are born.
Capers are sold in six different sizes ranging from the smallest, nonpareils, which are 7 millimeters, to Grusas, which measure more than 14 millimeters. The larger varieties have a more acidic taste and are softer in texture. They are best put to use in stews. When it's time to make chicken piccata, look for smaller capers. The smaller varieties are more pricey because they're handpicked, and in addition to their distinctive taste, smaller capers add a slight crunch to piccata. While larger capers should be chopped before using, the smaller varieties have the added convenience of being ready for action as is, straight from the jar.
Stick with fresh parsley instead of dried
Fresh parsley adds a delicious brightness to chicken piccata that dried parsley can't match. Though you can often use dried herbs in recipes that call for fresh if you don't have them on hand, for piccata, it's best to stick with fresh for the most flavorful results. Fresh herbs add wonderful flavor to foods, but keeping them alive and using them up before they start to go bad can be tricky. That's where dried herbs come in. They are shelf-stable and last much longer than fresh. The trade-off is the intensity of flavor. Think of dried herbs as concentrates. They can add tremendous flavor to food, but it's not the same as the vivid, sunny taste fresh herbs provide.
Add the fresh parsley at the end of cooking, when your piccata and sauce are just about done, to get the most and best flavor. You can keep parsley fresh by placing it in a glass of water like a plant and storing it in the fridge. This makes it easy to pinch off what you need for chicken piccata and other recipes.