You need this dish in your repertoire. Crispy, tangy, savory, buttery, and salty… all at the same time. And… AND! It takes no more than 20 minutes to make. If you need to make dinner in a pinch, have a decently well-stocked pantry, and at least one, lone chicken breast in your fridge, you are equipped to make this beastly chicken piccata.
Ingredients
Regular ‘ole chicken breast
All purpose flour
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Capers in brine
Dry white wine (ex. chardonnay)
Shallots / onion
Garlic
Fresh parsley
Butter
Method
1) Butterfly your chicken breast. With your knife parallel to the cutting board, slowly slice the breast in half longways. You definitely need a sharp knife and some finesse for this, but it is worth it. You want a nice, thin section of meat so you can maximize your crispy breading-to-meat ratio.
2) Pound out your butterflied chicken. Don’t get it tooo thin, but you want a nice, even 1/2 inch thick cutlet.
3) Season your meat with salt. A nice hefty pinch on both sides should do. Let that hang out while you cut your veg.
4) Finely dice shallots and garlic. I’d say half a shallot and 1 small garlic clove per chicken cutlet.
5) Mix flour with some salt and lightly coat your chicken. Generally, you want to season any batter/coating that you plan to fry with.
6) Heat olive oil in pan on medium-high heat, enough to shallow fry the chicken.
7) Fry chicken until golden brown on both sides and interior is fully cooked, about 2-3 minutes a side, depending on the thickness of the cutlet.
8) Remove chicken from the pan, pour out most of the oil, turn down the heat and add shallots, garlic and capers.
9) Once your aromatics are softened, crank the heat again and pour in a splash of wine to deglaze the pan. Try to scrape any browned bits off the bottom of the pan.
This is just after adding the butter. Notice the almost “sticky” appearance of the liquid (thanks to the starch and sugars). In this environment, the fat should emulsify easily, creating a luscious, homogeneous sauce.
10) After your wine has reduced to a shallow, viscous, pool of bubbling flavor, add in 2 tablespoon of cold butter… maybe even more. You will feel guilty about this, but your just gonna have to fight through it and put it all in. A tidbit about butter sauces: butter is awesome (duh). It is a combo of delicious fat and milk proteins that, under normal circumstances, separate when heated. The ideal pan sauce is homogeneous, or without fat separation. To achieve this, we need to emulsify the fat into our sauce. Luckily for us, there are already a few factors helping us achieve this. Both the starch in the flour and the sugar from the wine amps up the viscosity of the liquid, ultimately creating an environment that makes emulsification fairly easy. See the bootleg gif for a visual. IN SHORT: you want to let your butter melt, bubble, and mix with your wine reduction until that fat is fully emulsified. This takes some practice to get the timing right, but you generally know you’ve succeeded if you can get the sauce to coat the back of a spoon.
11) Squeeze a bit of lemon and throw in a few slices if you’d like. Also, add a whole bunch of fresh parsley for freshness and color. Season to taste with salt. I actually think black pepper has no place in this recipe.
12) Pour over your chicken and devour. Pasta is a pretty common accompaniment with piccata, but I advise against tossing it with your sauce. The stuff is liquid gold if you did it right, and you likely won’t have too much… It’s just the nature of a pan sauce. In my opinion, all of that should go right on the chicken for the most enjoyable experience. Pasta or not… enjoy.