Chicken Piccata Recipe.
Chicken Piccata
This delightful Italian dish showcases a few of my favorite bold and bright flavors: lemon, white wine, capers and parsley. With this flavor lineup, you just can’t miss.
It is made with chicken or veal cutlets (I never use veal, so I’ll only talk about chicken), so moist you will totally forget all past dried out chicken cutlet mishaps. It comes together in under 30 minutes from beginning to end, which is an added incentive to consider it for dinner: your family will love you!
The chicken cutlets are dredged in flour and seared, then cooked briefly in a garlicky wine broth. The initial dredging naturally forms a beautifully unctuous sauce.
Chicken Piccata can easily be made gluten-free
The only adjustment you will need to make is dredge the cutlets in gluten-free flour. Any GF flour will do and will yield that creamy sauce we want in the finished dish.
Make sure you use dry white wine
No need to pick expensive wine. A good dry table wine will do, just as long as it has no hint of sweetness. Needless to add, none of that nasty supermarket variety concoction labeled “cooking wine“
Work fast!
You don’t want the garlic to turn brown, so have your cutlets dredged before you throw the garlic in.
Seitan Piccata
It’s wonderful. Your vegan friends will be delighted to enjoy the treat as well. Follow these exact instructions, using my steamed seitan dough recipe, then slicing it
Some useful pantry staples
While the saffron is not essential to chicken piccata, I find that it imparts a wonderful added layer of flavor. saffron is expensive, but buying a one-ounce saffron box makes it much more cost effective that those tiny little vials, plus, having the box on hand will afford you the chance to make many more wonderful dishes using it: risotto, paella, fish soup etc.
Likewise, tiny capers (called non pareils) will brighten up many pasta and salad dishes. I encourage you to buy capers by the quart size jar, which is again much more cost effective than small containers.
Ingredients
- 6 chicken cutlets, medium thin, even thickness across their whole surface (vegan: use my seitan recipe https://levanacooks.com/recipe/seitan-recipes-the-seitanic-dishes/
- Flour in a plate, any kind
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1 medium onion, minced
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 1/2 cups dry white wine, or a combination wine and water to total 1 1/2 cups
- 1 teaspoon turmeric
- Good pinch saffron threads
- Juice and zest of 1 1/2 lemons
- 1/4 cup tiny capers
- 1/4 cup minced parsley leaves for sprinkling.
Instructions
Lightly dredge the cutlets in the flour, shaking off the excess. Keep them right there, you will be using them in just a couple minutes.
Heat the oil in a large skillet with straight sides. Add the onion and saute on a medium flame until just fragrant, add the garlic and stir in for just a few seconds, not giving it any time to brown.
Now quickly add your dredged cutlets to the skillet, and sauté them about 2 minutes on each side. Add the wine, turmeric, saffron, lemon juice, lemon zest and capers. Cover and cook about 10 minutes, turning the cutlets once mid-cooking.
Cook another 2-3 minutes, a drop longer if you need the sauce to get a a little thicker.
Transfer the cutlets to a platter. Pour the sauce over the cutlets, using it all up. Sprinkle with the parsley.
Serve hot over mashed potatoes, purée white root vegetables or noodles.
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