Chicken Marsala

Chicken Marsala is an Italian classic with relatively few ingredients, but that can instantly be elevated by using good ingredients and superior care and technique.

First, let us answer the question of what wines to use, given the importance of wine in the dish as evidenced by its name. There are two general categories of Marsala wine: dry and sweet. Both have sweet and fruity flavor profiles, but the "sweet" variation is much sweeter. Drink that with dessert. For this recipe, use the other kind-- dry marsala. It'll still be sweet, but not so aggressively as its counterpart. Like a lot of things in Italian cuisine named after locations, it's only the real deal if you can verify that it comes from wherever it's named after-- in this case, from a region of Sicily. Imported Marsalas can be significantly more expensive, but if at all possible, find them. In any case, whether you use a domestic wine or an imported one, look for the oldest, darkest Marsala available. They don't sponsor me, so I won't say explicitly who, but for as long as I've been cooking with Marsala, I've been using a high-quality domestic wine from upstate New York; I already have had great success with this recipe as it is, and I'm sure it would be even better after the pandemic ends if I could prepare this with imported wine.

As I've said in nearly every other recipe I've published so far, mise en place (that is "[setting] everything in its proper place" in French-- doing the washing, peeling, cutting, measuring, etc. ahead of time) is of paramount importance for the success of this recipe. You need several things set up for this recipe. Separately, measure out a cup each of Marsala (a third of the bottle-- a "cup" is 8 ounces, which is significantly more than the "glass" one would pour to drink the wine; a cup is 8oz/235mL, while a “glass” is about 5oz/150mL) and some sort of animal stock. Chicken, beef, veal, or any combination of the three are acceptable. However, I do recommend that if you're preparing steak marsala, you use primarily beef stock; veal marsala uses primarily veal stock, and chicken marsala uses primarily chicken stock. I find that cooking animal protein in its own fat or using the same stock to form a sauce to accompany the protein being prepared lends the best flavor, but Marsala wine pairs well with all three, so you can use whatever stock you have.

In a perfect world, the stock would match the protein and be homemade, but store-bought stock that doesn't necessarily match is fine. My only cautions are to avoid fish stock and vegetable stock. The former is far less intense than the wine, so the flavor of the wine would immediately and completely overpower it; especially if it's low-quality, it may also be far too salty. The latter is not only less intense and thus immediately overpowered like the former, but more often than not, its most predominant flavor (especially if it's store-bought) is salt, not the flavor of any of its components.

Additionally, wash and slice half a pound of portobello, baby bella, or button mushrooms. Ideally, introduce as little moisture to the mushrooms as possible, so dampen a paper towel and individually clean the mushrooms with it, rather than under running water. Using the latter method, the mushrooms will saturate; if they do, they'll burn before they release all their moisture, or they won't develop any color and will instead become soggy. Clean the mushrooms well but introduce as little water as possible to them in doing so. Once washed, slice the mushrooms along their length.

Preparation is also required for the chicken itself and the flour that will eventually coat it. Place several heaping tablespoons of flour on a plate, and season the flour with salt, pepper, dry thyme, dry oregano, dry basil, paprika, and garlic powder. Mix by hand until homogenous. On a clean cutting board with a long, clean, sharp knife, butterfly your chicken breasts. That is, make a long cut parallel to the cutting surface along the long edge of the piece of chicken, cutting all the way through to produce two pieces of identical shape but half the thickness of the original. I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again because no amount of repetition of food safety information will ever be enough. DO NOT WASH YOUR CHICKEN BEFORE PREPARING IT. DOING SO WILL ONLY CREATE MORE CROSS CONTAMINATION. Once the chicken has been properly cut and butterflied, dredge the chicken in the seasoned flour. Coat the chicken in the flour completely but shake off any excess by tossing each piece of chicken. Any excess flour beyond exactly what is needed to coat and season the chicken will become gummy. Keep the chicken cutlets on a single layer with lateral space between them so they do not stick to any neighbors.

Preheat a thin film of oil (I prefer extra virgin olive or extra virgin avocado)—enough to entirely coat the bottom of the pan, but not any more than is absolutely necessary to do that. The oil will be hot enough when ¼ teaspoon of water dropped into it sizzles and evaporates in 3 seconds. If the evaporation takes longer, your pan is not hot enough; if it happens sooner, back off the heat because your chicken will burn on the outside long before it is cooked on the inside. When the oil is at the right temperature, place the cutlets in the pan in such a way to not overcrowd it. Overcrowding will steam the chicken rather than shallowly frying it; steaming the chicken rather than frying will give the flour-based dredge a very unpleasantly gummy texture; the same effect will occur if the frying oil is too cold`. After 2 minutes, turn the chicken over and brown the other side another 90 seconds. These chicken breast cutlets are thin and cook quickly, but they’re not quite done yet—by design. Reserve the chicken on a separate plate off the heat. You’ll need to come back to it later.

You now need to take advantage of some fond built up in your pan—that is, some of the brown stuff full of flavor that shallow-frying the chicken left behind in the pan. This fond will burn if not covered with stuff, so be sure to do all the chopping you need to do for this next step well before it’s time to execute it—this demonstrates the importance of mise en place, even in home cooking. Add a finely chopped onion, the sliced mushrooms, and 2 minced garlic cloves to the pan, in that order. Stir; minced garlic burns quickly if left unattended. Allow the onions and the mushrooms to caramelize, helping them gain more color and flavor by deglazing the pan with some balsamic vinegar—just a few dashes. The better the balsamic vinegar, the stronger the flavor, so since the balsamic vinegar isn’t the star of the show, I’d say no more than a teaspoon. “Deglazing” simply means “using a cooking-grade acid [citrus juices, vinegar, wine, etc.] to chemically loosen flavorful stuff stuck to the bottom of the pan.” Once the onions are caramelized, pour in the stock first. Then, MOVE THE PAN OFF THE HEAT before adding the Marsala wine to be as safe as possible. Two things make Marsala Marsala. The first is the kind of grape used to make the wine, only found in one area of Sicily. The second is the fact that Marsala wine is not pure wine, but wine “spiked” with brandy. Whereas 10% alcohol might be normal for a white wine (although I’ve cooked with as low as 7%) and 13% might be about right for a red wine (I’ve seen anywhere between 10 and 15), Marsala wines, because of the Brandy, average anywhere between 17% and 22%. (Pure brandy is anywhere from 35 to 65% alcohol, and the presence of the brandy fortifying this wine raises its alcohol content above almost any other wine, like averaging an outlier will do to any statistical set). Cooking with it thus requires the same amount of care as cooking with the pure liquor.

Cooking with any kind of liquor or liquor-fortified wine will produce a colored flame, in a showy cooking technique called “flambé” in which liquor is added to food in a previously-heated pan that has been moved away from a heat source and then returned to then momentarily set the alcohol on fire to burn off the alcohol but leave the desirable flavor compounds that flavor the liquor. White wines, and even normal red wines with “high” alcohol content (by red standards, so around 14%) don’t flambé because even being 1/7 alcohol, that’s not enough to make the alcohol combust. But Marsala does have enough alcohol by volume (20% plus-or-minus a few percentage points depending on who made it) because it contains brandy. The brandy’s alcohol content is so much higher than the content of the wine without it that it brings up the overall average alcohol content by volume of the wine enough that Marsala, but not other wines, will almost certainly flambé. Of course, if you were to cook directly with the liquor, you would need to be extremely careful: pure liquors will certainly flambé because they have enough alcohol in them—in many cases, more alcohol than other things.

Flambé cooking can be intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be. Just remember to wear safe clothing (nothing too baggy or dangling) and add the flambé liquid off the heat. If you do, when you put it back on the heat, your pan will catch fire, and you’ll get to enjoy the show (people pay top-dollar to flambé cheese and other foods just to have the fun visual experience of watching the flames, because they look nice and the colors change depending on which spirit was used) for a few seconds. The fire will die down naturally once the alcohol burns off. If you have family around, I strongly suggest that you warn them before you prepare a Chicken Marsala or any other dish that involves flambé so as not to startle them. Once the alcohol has burned off, gently simmer the sauce for a few minutes to intensify color and flavor.

Emulsify 1 tablespoon of cold butter per person into the sauce by cutting pieces of butter straight from the fridge into the sauce and whisking constantly until it melts and is indistinguishable from the rest of the sauce. Return the chicken to the pan. Maintain at a quiet simmer. The chicken is almost cooked through, having gone most of the way in the pan when it was fried and another part in carryover cooking from its own residual heat on the separate plate. Now, lay the cutlets into the finished sauce and spoon it over the cutlets. Let the cutlets meld with the sauce. Leave the chicken in the sauce for another 10 minutes over low heat; after 10 minutes, the chicken will be cooked completely. Some of the coating will—deliberately—come off the chicken. The small bits of the seasoned flour coating that do come off of the cutlet will finish most of what the emulsion of the butter and the burning off of the alcohol has already done: thickening the sauce.

Prepare 1 pound of pasta per 3 people being served (about 5 ounces per person, or about 140 grams per person) according to the manufacturer’s instructions to al dente. For final presentation, once again separate the chicken from the sauce, combine the pasta and the sauce, and present the chicken served on top of the pasta. Garnish as desired with Parmesan and/or Romano cheese.  

If you make this, be sure to leave a comment down below letting me know!