Classic Chicken Marsala

An Italian-American classic! A savory sauce made with butter, Marsala wine, shallots, and mushrooms. Serve over pasta, rice or mashed potatoes.

Classic Chicken Marsala

Serves 4

Four 6 oz (170g) portions of chicken breast, pounded or cut into scallopine
All purpose flour for dredging
3 tablespoons olive oil
8 tablespoons (115g) unsalted butter
2-3 tablespoons of minced shallots
8 oz (204g) mushrooms
3/4 cup (175g) Marsala wine
1/2 cup (150ml) chicken stock, or as needed
2-3 tablespoons chopped flat leaf Italian parsley
Salt and pepper

Season both sides of the scallopine, dredge in flour and shake or tap off any excess flour.
Heat olive oil and 3 tablespoons of butter in a 12 inch (30 cm) sauté pan, over medium heat, until butter foams. Place as many scallopine as will fit into the pan without touching and cook until golden brown, about 3 minutes. Flip each piece as it browns. When both sides are cooked through remove to a rack or plate (if using a plate, place the chicken on paper towels).
If your pan appears to be too dry, add 2 more tablespoons of butter, when that melts, add the shallots and mushrooms. When the mushrooms are soft, about 3-4 minutes. Stir in the Marsala and chicken stock. Bring to a boil, scraping the fond (brown bits) to release them into the sauce. When the sauce is reduced by half, it should be thickened. Taste for seasoning, adding salt and pepper as needed.
Assess your sauce this point. If you need more, add a little more wine or stock as you please. Add the remaining butter. Return the scallopine to the pan, sprinkle the chopped parsley over the top and serve. Enjoy!!

Hi, welcome to Nina in the Kitchen where today 
I’m making a chicken marsala. Um, so first I’m going to talk about scalopini. Scolopini is 
an Italian word that means a little scallop, like a little sea scolop. But you know, Italians 
are very fanciful when it comes to their language. And so over time, what scallopini became is a 
very thin, usually pounded out cutlet of meat, a medallion of meat with the fat trimmed 
off. There’s it’s always boneless. Um, any sineus, anything like that has been 
removed. So that’s what I have here. What I did is I took this, cut it down to be about 
a/4 of an inch and then pounded it out. And now it’s nice and thin. That’s about an eighth of 
an inch. Then you want some flour to dredge your scallopini in. I also have this is a dry Marsala. 
I was taught that dry marsala is for savory foods and that sweet marsala is for desserts like 
um any custard that would come out of Sicily. Basically it might go into a cake, it might go 
into a um canoli, something like that that will have a little morsala wine in it. Marsala wine 
is a fortified wine. If you don’t have morsala you can just use a dry wine and add a little 
brandy to it. Um, some people put a little white uh grape juice in it because you want a little 
bit of sweetness there. You can also use, believe it or not, cherry vinegar with a little grape 
juice in it. Um, what else? You use vermouth, a dry vermouth or dry cherry. Those are all 
fine, but the real deal is really good. Um, I have butter for the pan. And then also to finish 
the dish, this is two small shallots. I have um a little bit of and that’s minced up. Now, if 
you’ll notice, I don’t have garlic in this dish. And the reason is because it’s a winebased sauce. 
It’s going to be a little sweet, even if it’s a sweetness in the background. And the pungency 
from garlic is not what I want here. So, okay, that’s why I’m going with shallot. It’s mild. It’s 
sweet tasting. It’ll be beautiful with a Marsala. This is chicken broth. It’s homemade. I have um 
two forms that I use. One is an ice cube tray. So, that’s two tablespoons. I’ve measured them 
out. This bigger one is um 1/3 of a cup. So, I’m putting those together. If I need more, you 
may need more. We’ll just see what happens. This is 8 oz of mushrooms. I use cremeni mushrooms. 
And if you’ll notice, I cut them differently. Some are thin, some are quartered. Um, some are 
chopped a little finer than that. Years ago, a chef told me that he if there’s a pervasive 
flavor in a dish, for example, something like a mushroom because it has texture as well. You want 
to do different cuts because visually it’s more interesting and texturally. Um, so the mouth feel 
on that is more interesting than just everything’s the same. So there’s a good chef tip for you. 
Um, I have parsley. And this is really just as a garnish for the finish. But here’s how I do my 
parsley. I hold all of the stems together. I’m keeping my knife blade at about 10° to the table 
to the cutting board. And then you just shave it like that. So all the stems are left behind. 
Those go into the stock bag. And these stems are small enough that um you can just chop those 
up. That’ll be fine. No one no one has to stand in the kitchen picking little little bits of leaves 
off of things. Um and I have a lemon to finish. I’m going to taste all of this at the end. If 
it needs a little punch, a little brightness, this is the way to go. And then salt. That’s it. 
Another great thing about Marsala is that it’s all made in one pan. So easy clean up. I should 
also mention the meats you can use. You can use ve pork, turkey, chicken breast like I’m doing today 
or chicken thighs, boneless, skinless thighs if you want a little more flavor. Those are great. 
Before we go to the sauté pan, couple of things to mention is that this chicken because this has 
been pounded out, and this happens with all meats that you pound, you’re you’re um making the the 
texture of the meat different. So, you’ll not you’re not going to have dry chicken breast. 
You’re not going to have um that cardboardy pork. Each serving per person should be about 6 
ounces. What I have in the pan is some cooking quality olive oil. I’m going to put in about 3 
tablespoon of butter. And this is on a medium heat. You just want to you want to salt these 
both sides. I missed this one, but that’s okay. And get them going. Whichever side you put down in the pan, remember 
that’s your presentation side. So, you want the pretty side if it matters to you. You want the 
pretty side to go in first. I started making these little pans and I put way too much flour 
in here, but oh well, you live, you learn. Um, I just take the spoil and throw the whole thing 
out. I usually don’t waste my flour like that, but you know how that goes. So, um, when these come 
out, they just go onto a clean plate. I’ll put them in the toaster oven just to keep them warm, 
but then we get to the vegetable. This only takes a couple of minutes. I have the chicken stock 
in the microwave just thighing out, and these are ready to come out. Remember, they’re going 
back in here, so they’ll cook a little longer. And all of these little brown 
bits, that’s all flavor. So, we’re happy with that. A great side dish 
for this is, my favorite is noodles, some sort of pasta. You can use um spaghetti 
or linguini. I like egg noodles personally, so I think I’ll make those for this. 
I’m just going to put this in my oven. At this point, you want to look at 
your fat situation. I think this looks pretty good. If these were 
any browner, I’d take them out, but I I think I’m going to go with 
that. So, first thing in shallots and the mushrooms. Now, if you salt this right now, and you can, what would happen is you would get no 
browning whatsoever on these mushrooms. And I kind of like the idea of that. So, 
I’m going to not salt this until the end. Okay. So, at this point, these are almost done. 
Now, we’re going to build the sauce around them. Here goes my chicken broth. And that’s about 
a/2 cup of chicken broth. And I’m going in with 3/4 of a cup to three of Marsala wine. And what 
happens is the little bit of flour that was on your chicken cutlets actually helps to thicken 
this. We’re going to boil this down. That also thickens it and the reduction makes this all a 
little more intense. So the flavor of the alcohol gets burned out, but the flavors remain. The 
chicken flavor remains. It’s delicious. I’m going to put a little bit of salt in here because the 
vegetables were not salted and my chicken broth. You should never, if you’re making your own 
stock, never put salt in it because you don’t know how you’re going to use it. So, in this 
case, I’m reducing for the final flourish. It’s nice to have something fresh at the end. 
Now, you want to keep control of this sauce because you want a little bit of sauce on each of 
these medallions of meat, each of these scalini. And that’s the dish. This is how I like to serve 
it. There’s a few little egg noodles here. I put some Romano cheese on that and butter. You can 
do brown butter, too. That would be delicious. M. This is so good. It’s It’s bright, 
but it’s earthy. It’s sweet, but um I don’t want to say it’s sweet, 
but it’s it’s a savory dish, but there’s a sweetness to it. And then, 
of course, you have noodles. I mean, who doesn’t love that? So, forget date 
night. Stay home. Make this. It’s a very special meal. Enjoy. And thank you so much for 
watching. See you next time. Bye, guys. [Music]