Chicken Piccata

Most chicken piccata recipes are terrible: after a lot of sweat and tears, they come out greasy and bland.  The fine folks at Cook's Illustrated figured out a solution to this problem, and I've refined it further for a fast weeknight dinner.

Chicken Piccata

serves 4

Halve 1 lemon, pole to pole.  Cut crosswise into very thin slices (or use a mandolin).

Using the butterflying technique, cut 4 chicken breasts in half to yield two thinner cutlets.  Salt and pepper them, then coat in flour.  In olive oil, saute cutlets in batches for 2-2.5 minutes per side over medium high heat.  Set aside.

Then in the same pan, make the sauce.  (The flour left behind by the cutlets will help to thicken it.)

Saute on medium for 30 seconds:

1 small shallot, minced (or substitute 1 clove garlic)

Add and simmer for 4 minutes:

1 c. chicken broth

thin lemon slices

Add and simmer about 1 minute more:

1/4 c. lemon juice

2 tbsp. capers

Pull your pan sauce off the heat and slowly melt in 3 tbsp. butter (i.e. monter au beurre).  Serve immediately over chicken.

Cooking the lemon slices in the chicken broth softens them and makes them edible, peel and all.  The easiest way to produce thin pieces is to slice the lemon as pictured below, in slices as thin as you can manage:

This recipe calls for a minced shallot.  Contrary to popular belief, shallots and green onions are not the same thing.  They're close cousins, but the two aren't completely interchangeable.  In this recipe, green onions would be too harsh.  If you need to make a substitution for the shallot, use garlic.

Behold the mighty shallot.

 

Here's how to butterfly a chicken breast.  In most recipes, this is intended to produce a thinner, single piece of meat.  Here, we're using it to cut a breast completely in half.