A Classic Chicken Marsala Recipe
Chicken Marsala is one of my all-time favorite recipes. There is something about the sweetness of the Marsala wine that gives this dish a wonderful flavor.
The cooking technique for making chicken Marsala is similar to chicken piccata, pan fry the chicken breasts, deglaze the pan with wine and add the other ingredients to make a pan sauce.
In the past, I have called the cooking technique "saute." Still, I now understand that sauteing has more to do with cooking smaller, identically sized ingredients. Think diced carrots or cubed chicken or beef.
You'll hear many cooks say to "saute a chicken breast," but now I think of it as pan-fry a chicken breast because of the size of the breast. So you aren't going to have the breasts "jump" in the pan.
You may be more familiar with Veal Marsala, another classic Italian dish almost precisely the same as this Chicken Marsala, except it is made with veal. I enjoy both, but veal is much more expensive and sometimes harder to find. And then some just don't like eating veal, so this is a good option.
How I Found This Recipe
Years ago, I was looking to duplicate a recipe for chicken piccata. I enjoyed a small restaurant when I lived in New York City. I knew it was flour, lemon, and butter sauce, but I wanted to find a recipe to refresh my memory before jumping into it.
After looking through a bunch of my favorite Italian cookbooks for chicken or veal piccata recipes without success, I finally gave up. Finally, I found a recipe for "veal" piccata in my New Basics Cookbook.
When I looked in my refrigerator, I realized we had no lemons. This is a challenging dish to make with lemon; I didn't feel like running to the grocery store. Right next to the veal piccata recipe was one for veal Marsala.
I had all the ingredients to make the Marsala version, so I adapted it to prepare with chicken breasts.
To learn more about the technique of pan frying and how it compares to sauteing and stir fry. One of this recipe's key ingredients is demi-glace, a brown stock that is reduced to a syrupy consistency.
It takes hours to make it at home but lucky for us, there are some excellent commercial products on the market that are really good. I will share them with you below.
Chicken Marsala Recipe
Ingredients
- 4 chicken breasts boneless
- ½ cup all purpose flour
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 2 cups mushrooms
- 1 tablespoons olive oil
- ½ cup Marsala wine
- salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
- 2 sprigs fresh flat-leafed parsley
Instructions
- Flatten the chicken breasts between two pieces of waxed paper with a meat pounder until thin. If you're not a gadget person like myself and don't own every kitchen utensil available, including a meat pounder, try using the edge of a can of soup or a small sauté pan.You must pound the breasts to an equal thickness. This is, so they cook evenly, and one breast doesn't cook faster than another.
- Slice the mushrooms into thin slices and finely chop the parsley.
- Add the butter to a fry pan/skillet, melt over medium heat, add the mushrooms and cook until lightly browned. It's hard to tell you exactly how long this will take since all stove tops are different.Depending on whether you are using a gas or electric will make a difference. On my household gas stove, it takes 8 - 12 minutes, but on my mom's electric stove, it takes longer.
- Remove the mushrooms and reserve.
- Add the oil to the pan and up the heat a little. I don't advise cooking at high until you get comfortable cooking at high heat. It means working a little faster and watching a little closer, but you want the pan to be hot to pan fry the breasts properly.
- While the oil is heating up, dredge each chicken breast in flour. I like to put the flour in a shallow soup bowl or on a plate and dip each breast into the flour and add to the pan using one hand.
- Sauté the breasts for approximately 1-2 minute each side.
- Remember, chicken breasts will cook faster because they are thinner. If you are preparing more than four breasts, it's important not to crowd the pan, so they fry and do not steam.
- Better to cook in batches than trying to cook them all at once.
- Remove the breasts from the pan, reserve on a platter, and cover with tin foil to keep warm.
- Add the Marsala wine to the pan to deglaze, scraping the small bits of chicken stuck to the pan.
- (Remember, Marsala is a wine and contains alcohol so be careful when adding it to a hot pan. Better to remove the pan from the heat when deglazing any pan with wine.)
- Simmer until slightly reduced, approximately 2 minutes, again depending on your stove top.
- Add the reserved mushrooms, season with salt and pepper and parsley.
- Plate the chicken breasts along with your sides and top with sauce.
The photo above shows the chicken Marsala served over mashed potatoes and sauteed spinach.
The next night I made Chicken Piccata with the three leftover chicken breasts that were already cooked. I'm sure the experts would say the Chicken Piccata loses something because the breasts were already cooked. Still, to tell you the truth, I didn't notice that much difference.
What I remember was how delicious the piccata sauce was.
My Top Choices for Demi Glace
Online Sources: Demi Glace
For those of you who do not want to make demi glace at home.
Demi glace is the most important ingredient for making classic "restaurant quality" brown sauces. All the great French brown sauces use demi glace. But it can also be used in soups, stews and braises. It's something you can make at home but it takes a long, long time to do it right and if you make one mistake, it can easily be ruined. Lucky for us, there are now some great sources for commercial grade demi glace and I want to share a few with you now. Everyone has their preferences so I suggest you give each a try to find out which product you like best.Savory Choice's Demi Glace
Ready in minutes, Savory Choice beef demi glace allows home chefs to deliver impressive restaurant-quality meals quickly and cost-effectively. Professional chefs typically take at least 24 hours to prepare this traditional reduction sauce by simmering stock, vegetables, wine and spices to a velvety consistency.More Than Gourmet's Demi Glace Gold
One of my first commercial demi glace products and still one of my favorites. For almost 25 years, More Than Gourmet has been the gold standard for flavor and quality when it comes to sauces, stock, and soup. This product comes in 1 pound tubs and 1.5 ounce pucks and even bigger sizes if you are a commercial establishment. I like buying 6 of the pucks at a time unless I'm doing a big party and need the pounder.
Linda
Great recipe and easy to follow!!
UrbanDecayChris
This REALLY is a PHENOMENAL recipe. Cooked it for Valentines day since it's my girlfriends favorite dish (I've personally never made it until then). It BLEW HER AWAY!
Dave Shields
In the directions above you said "add the mushrooms and cook until lightly browned". When I saute mushrooms I will cook them to the point that the liquid I am cooking them with is released again. Is the "lightly browned" stage at that point or a little earlier?
The Reluctant Gourmet
Hi Dave, in my experience, the browning takes place after they have released their liquids, the liquids cook off and then they start to brown.
Amy
I followed the link to this recipe for Marsala from your piece re: Demi glacé gold, So where does the Demi glacé come into play in this recipe? (By the way when referencing amounts of DG in your recipes, would be helpful to know how much in tsp/tablespoons of Demi glacé gold with how much water). Thx!
G. Stephen Jones
Hi Amy, thanks for pointing this out to me. The recipe shown is an adaptation from the New Basics Cookbook version and does not include Demi Glace as one of the ingredients. It's a great recipe that I've used many times but once I learned how my friend and professional chef Ricco DeLuca prepared it, I wrote an ebook with his recipe describing way more than how to make chicken Marsala but a mini tutorial on how to saute, make pan sauces and how to make multiple sauces with these techniques. The ebook is no longer available, so I'm going to post Chef Ricco's recipe here and I'll post this version in another post.
To answer your question about Demi Glace Gold, one of my favorite commercial demi-glace products, I don't use teaspoons or tablespoons because it is so gelatinous, it's difficult to measure out that way. I prefer to use 1 ounce Demi Glace Gold to 5 ounces of hot water.
If you had to use tablespoons, 1 fluid ounce = 2 tablespoons but the Demi Glace Gold is not fluid. Maybe if you heated it up it would work but I don't suggest that. In the future, I'll try to only use demi-glace in my ingredients and suggest Demi Glace Gold as a good commercial substitute.
Danielle Sullivan
So I am learning about sauces (your website has been an wonderful tool). However i am wondering whether to attempt making my own demi glace or to buy demi glace gold. The container seems rather small. How many servings do you get out of a typical container? Also Ive read you article on how to make beef broth, brown sauce and demi-glace and am wondering if you have any resources for making larger quantities (i'm the make it and freeze it type).
THanks!
The Reluctant Gourmet
Danielle, I have made demi glace from scratch just a couple of times and unless you are a purest, I find there are some very good commercial products like Demi Glace Gold that work just as well for me and my cooking. It takes a lot of work and a lot of time to make demi at home so if you do, I recommend you make a bunch and freeze it like you suggested. There's a good recipe at http://www.gatewaygourmet.com/demi_glace.htm for making a gallon of demi glace that you may want to take a look at. Let me know how you do and if you will be making it again.
Mac Brown
Tried to use your print button but it would not work.
so dissappointed
G. Stephen Jones
Not sure why Mac. I just tried it and it worked fine.