Favorite Chicken Piccata

Chicken piccata is the kind of Italian-American restaurant standard that earns its place because it works. Tender, flour-dredged chicken breast gets browned in butter, then finished with a quick deglaze of sherry, lemon juice, and salty capers, all in the same pan. Twenty minutes of active cooking, restaurant-quality results.

Pounding the breasts flat is the technique you cannot skip. Even thickness means even cooking, and thinner cutlets hit the table tender and juicy instead of dry on the edges and undercooked in the middle. A meat mallet works, but the bottom of a heavy skillet between two sheets of plastic wrap does the same job.

The sauce is the soul of the dish. Sherry brings depth and a faint nutty note that white wine alone cannot, lemon juice cuts the butter with brightness, and capers add salty pop in every bite. Reduced together over high heat, the sauce thickens slightly into a glossy gravy that coats the chicken without smothering it.

A double-onion approach (yellow onion plus four green onions) is a slight regional twist, the green onions add a fresher, slightly sweet herbal note on top of the sweeter sauteed yellow onion base.

Pro Tips

• Pound chicken to even ¼-inch thickness, not paper-thin. Too thin and it dries out, too thick and it cooks unevenly.
• Shake off excess flour after dredging, a thick coating burns instead of browning and clumps in the pan sauce.
• Use a clarified butter or butter-oil mix for the sear, plain butter burns at the high heat needed for golden crust.
• Add a splash of chicken broth (the optional ingredient in the recipe) to stretch the sauce and keep it from over-reducing.

Variations

• Substitute capers with chopped Castelvetrano olives for a milder, fruitier briny note.
• Add a tablespoon of butter at the very end to mount the sauce, this gives it a glossy, velvety finish.
• Use thin pork cutlets or veal in place of chicken for a true scaloppine variation.