Lemony Chicken Piccata

Hey everyone, welcome to my kitchen. I'm Bethany. And today's recipe, I'm gonna be showing you how to make chicken piccata. This is a lemony and bright, very tangy chicken dish. It's actually one of the easiest Italian chicken recipes that you can make. So, let's get right into it. All right, so a piccata, like I said, is just very simple ingredients. So we're first gonna get our sauce started so that we can kind of have that ready ahead of time. Makes preparation a little quicker and easier. We're gonna do one cup of chicken stock. And then any piccata needs lemon in it. That's a huge ingredient. And we're gonna do 1 1⁄4 teaspoon of lemon zest. Get that nice lemony flavor. Then we're gonna juice one whole lemon. And that's gonna give a nice acidic flavor to our sauce. The word piccata comes from piccato, and it's mainly just talking about the preparation for the actual meat in this dish. And you can use veal, but it's typically chicken that's the most popular. And what piccata really is, is you're just using thinly cut chicken or veal, and you're cooking it in a really nice lemon butter caper sauce. So, it's very simple, but that's really what piccata means. So, then we're gonna be using some capers. And what I did was I rinsed these capers, are really tangy, and they're also very salty because they're in a really salty brine. So, you don't want all the salt in that. And we're gonna add those rinsed and drained capers right to our sauce. Those capers are gonna add a really nice punch of flavor to the whole dish. And then we're gonna do 1⁄4 teaspoon of garlic powder. And then we're also gonna layer this with fresh garlic too. I think the garlic powder and the raw garlic layered together just add a little bit more flavor and garlic flavor into the whole thing, but it's only 1⁄4 teaspoon of garlic powder. So, it's not gonna punch you in the face. I have some pretty large garlic cloves that I'm using. So, one of them could really count for two, but I'm gonna use two big ones. I don't mind a lot of garlic because it always adds amazing flavor to any dish. And because this dish has such minimal ingredients and simple ingredients in it, I really believe in layering as much of just the aromatics, like the garlic and the powder, to really just build as much flavor as we can because we're using simple ingredients. And last but not least, we'll add a pinch of salt to this and then some black pepper too. So, just a generous pinch of both. And then we'll stir all of that together. So, now we'll set this aside and we'll get ready to prep our chicken. All right, so when making chicken piccata, one of the main characteristics of that dish is the chicken is usually sliced really thin and pounded. Typically, I'll take two chicken breasts that are a bit larger and I'll slice them in half. And that way I have four cutlets. But today, I'm using smaller chicken breasts. And until I opened them out of the package, did I realize I only have three? So, this recipe calls for four, so just so you know. But I have to go with what I have. So, I only have three chicken breasts. They're very tiny. I feel like if I slice them in half, they're gonna be very thin. And what I did was I put the chicken breasts in a Ziploc bag. You can put them between parchment paper too. I just find this is a little bit cleaner from avoiding splattering. And we got our baseball bat or a rolling pin. Look, I keep forgetting to get a meat pounder. So, I will get one, but I'm just using what I have. And we're gonna just pound the chicken breasts until they're about the same in just thickness. Pounding them also helps break down the muscle fibers of the chicken breasts so that it can help them tenderize. Because chicken breasts can be a little tough sometimes. So, this will really help. All right, see how those have transformed. They were tiny and now they're a lot bigger, so perfect. All right, now that we've pounded the chicken, we're gonna add them to a plate. We're gonna season these. And you always wanna make sure you have at least one clean hand to season everything with. So, we'll sprinkle a generous amount of salt. And now some black pepper, both sides. That's why you always wanna season in layers. You season the chicken, you season the sauce, you season the flour that we're gonna use. All right, so now we're gonna dredge the chicken breasts in some flour. And I did add a pinch of salt to the flour as well. And shake off any of that extra excess flour. We don't want a ton of it going into the dish. And the reason that we flour the chicken breasts is because it gives a nice golden color to the chicken. It helps it brown nicely in the pan. But it also will help the sauce thicken that we made earlier. While it cooks in the pan, it kinda comes off of the chicken and naturally thickens it. All right, so now that we have our chicken floured, we have a big sauce pan that's been heating up on a low to medium heat. And I'm just gonna bump it up to a medium heat now. We wanna make sure that that's nice and hot before we add the chicken. It's gonna help the chicken not stick to the pan. And we're gonna do a mixture of two tablespoons of salted butter and two tablespoons of olive oil. And the combination of the butter and the oil is gonna be really nice, because the butter adds richness, like I always mention in the dishes that I use it in. But it's also gonna add just a nice golden color to the chicken and more flavor than just olive oil. So we get that butter melted. You always wanna add your chicken or meat in a pan and place it away from you rather than towards you so that you don't wear the oil in your pan all over your clothes. I thought my pan was also a little hotter. So it's been on for like 15 minutes, but I guess it was lower than I thought. So we need this to come up to a higher temperature. We want it to sizzle to get that nice browning of the chicken. But we're gonna let the chicken cook two to three minutes on each side just until it's nicely browned. It will not be fully cooked. This is just to brown it. Okay, so now that we have browned our chicken breasts, we're gonna remove them from the pan and place them on a clean plate. And again, these are not fully cooked, just browned. Okay, so we'll set those aside. Now we'll get our sauce that we had made earlier and we're gonna add that to our pan that we cooked our chicken in. And we're just gonna whisk everything into the pan and just getting any of those brown bits on the bottom from the chicken, that's gonna flavor the sauce even more. All right, so now we're gonna let this sauce cook for just several minutes. I want it to thicken up a little bit and then we're gonna add the chicken back and let it finish cooking in the sauce. All right, so as our sauce is finishing reducing, I'm gonna add one last tablespoon of salted butter. And this is gonna kind of help the sauce emulsify a little bit more, get a little creamier, a little richer. And I'm just gonna whisk that in with the sauce so that it doesn't break. Now we're gonna add our chicken back to the sauce and we'll let the sauce continue to thicken a little bit more, but also we want it to cook the chicken breasts. All right, so as our chicken piccata is finishing its cooking process, we're gonna chop up some fresh parsley. And this is just gonna add a nice touch of bright flavor to it. And a piccata is typically always served with fresh parsley, so. Adds a nice finishing touch to the whole dish. So Drew's here to taste. Welcome. Thank you. You really like chicken piccata, so I figured you'd be a good taste tester. I do, yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, so we can try it. All right, let's do it. It's really good. Really good. The tanginess of the capers is definitely a main characteristic that I feel like makes a piccata what it is, is that like tangy. Where does that come from? It's the capers. It's the capers? Yeah, yeah. And then you get the lemon and the parsley. So yeah, you really like piccata, so what do you think of this? Yeah, this is great. I love it. Yeah, I think this is, I love it with the pasta that you serve it with as well. Yeah, we'll serve this with pasta. But yeah, it's just, again, I love that bright tang flavor. It's great. I'm glad, yeah. And the chicken is really tender. I don't love chicken breasts because I feel like I keep getting really like tough chicken breasts lately, and because we pounded them, that's tenderizing and breaking down the muscle fibers, and then it just really helps the chicken not be a regular chicken breast. It's really tender, juicy, flavorful, so all the things that you want, so. Sweet, thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for tasting. But yeah, I hope you guys enjoy this recipe. It's definitely a very quick and easy recipe to make, and just a great Italian classic. So you can pair this with pasta or some vegetables on the side, like asparagus or broccolini. It's just a great spring dish as we head out of winter and say farewell to that season, and we go into spring. It's just a great spring dish or summer. So I hope you guys enjoy it, and as always, we'll catch you in the next recipe, and we'll see you in the comments.