Chicken Piccata

If you’re looking for an easy weeknight meal that’s sure to please, then you’ve got to try my chicken piccata recipe.

This piccata will be ready before you know it, so let’s get started.

Preparing the Chicken

Piccata means pounded thinly, so you can have all kinds of piccata, but for chicken piccata we’re going to use chicken breasts: slice them down the middle, then pound them thinly. These cook up so fast and you’re giving them more surface area to absorb flavor.

Seems scary to have a knife so close to your hand, but it’s actually safer when you know where your hand is. This could be a bit messy, so you might notice that I have a big sheet of plastic out here. I’m just gonna cover the chicken over so you don’t get any weird stuff flying around. Use the flat end of your poultry hammer—or whatever hammer you have—and just give it a nice pound. You’re not pounding your chicken into oblivion; you want to have maybe about half an inch, a little bit less. If you go too far, it’s going to fall apart, and that’s too much. Pound within reason.

All right, so my chicken breast is nice and thin. Sprinkle a little salt on there—be judicious—and crack some pepper, too. Flip them over and season the other side as well. Wash those hands; this prep happens so quickly.

Dredging the Chicken

The next step is to dredge the chicken in some flour. I have about a third of a cup of flour. You can use a shallow dish or a bowl. We’re just going to coat it in flour, shake off the excess, and repeat for the other sides. It’s the easiest way of cooking chicken—this is the perfect weeknight meal when you want to make something that’s really fast but that no one’s going to complain about. Chicken piccata is here to the rescue.

Making the Sauce

For this recipe I want about a half cup of lemon juice. Strain those seeds out. Always give your lemons a roll before juicing; makes them juicier.

My pan is over medium-high heat. I’m adding a generous two tablespoons of butter and two tablespoons of olive oil. While the butter’s melting, we’re going to open up our wine. The wine can be skipped; you could just use more chicken stock if you want, but this is so nice together—it really adds a nice brightness of flavor and complements the lemon.

Cooking the Chicken

Add those chicken pieces right onto the skillet. You can cook this in batches or you can cook them all together; it depends on the size of your cutlets and the size of your skillet. These are really big cutlets, so I’ll be doing two batches. After about three minutes you’re gonna flip it over; it should be nice and golden on both sides. If you see any black bits in the pan, that’s totally okay—those are the milk solids from your butter that have really caramelized up. Don’t worry about it.

Setting this chicken aside and doing my next batch.

Finishing the Sauce

While this chicken’s cooking, we can complete the sauce. In this mixing cup I already have the lemon juice; I’m going to add one cup of white wine and a half cup of chicken stock. It looks like my chicken’s done, so I’m going to remove it onto a plate. I lowered the heat and I’m adding my stock, wine, and lemon juice right now. The alcohol in the wine is going to cook off, it’s going to deglaze the pan, and it’s going to reduce.

While your sauce is reducing, go ahead and give a handful of parsley a rough chop. I drained and rinsed a quarter cup of capers; these are going to give you a ton of briny, amazing flavor, so go ahead and add those in. This is just about screaming hot—I should not have touched that—but it’s also reduced by half, so we’re ready to go on to the next step.

Once your sauce is done, give it a taste and then season with salt and pepper accordingly. I think this tastes perfect, but you might want a dash of salt or maybe some more pepper. This sauce is a little astringent right now because of all the acids, so we’re gonna add two tablespoons of butter right into the pan and let that mellow everything out. Butter fixes everything.

Bringing It All Together

Once your butter is melted, you’re gonna add the chicken breasts back into the pan—they shrink after cooking, so now they all fit. Spoon the sauce over the chicken. Garnish with your beautiful chopped parsley. It’s a lot of parsley, but that’s how I like it.

If you’re serving this straight from the pan, you can add some lemon wedges to really make it beautiful and serve it right away, but I love to serve this over a big bed of pasta because everybody likes pasta.