Chicken piccata is an Italian dish of pan-seared, golden chicken breasts that are cooked in a decadent buttery white wine, lemon and caper sauce and served over angel hair pasta. It’s really easy to make this Italian classic at home instead of going to a restaurant!
You can make restaurant-worthy chicken piccata in under 25 minutes and serve it with some focaccia peasant bread or homemade garlic bread for the perfect meal.
The Difference Between Chicken Piccata and Chicken Francaise
This chicken piccata recipe is the recipe that accompanies my Chicken Francaise recipe, many years ago I made both of them in the same week! For chicken piccata, you do not batter the chicken. You simply dip it in the flour mixture and fry it after that. This would be best for a quicker version, to make the Chicken Francaise well, you have to let the batter sit on the chicken and get cold for 30 minutes.
My chicken Francaise also has some canned artichokes in the sauce, so pick which one you prefer!
Chicken Piccata Ingredients
While the list of ingredients is long, chicken piccata isn’t that complex to make. There are three parts to the dish :
- The floured chicken breasts. A Parmesan and flour mixture coats the chicken breasts before cooking
- The sauce. A chicken stock sauce that has white wine, lemon juice, and capers in it for flavor.
- Angel hair pasta to serve the chicken piccata on
How to Make Chicken Piccata
- Combine the ingredients for the coating in a bowl.
- Dredge the chicken in the flour until it’s coated.
- Cook the chicken until it’s no longer pink, then place in a warm oven.
- Make the sauce.
- Place the chicken back in the pan and cook a while longer
- Serve over angel hair pasta.
This is an OLD post that I have refreshed with new photos and so this photo is small and old, so have a good laugh at it, but I am leaving it in the post because it shows the difference between Chicken Francaise and Piccata. Francaise is battered while piccata merely dipped in the flour mixture. I have updated this post from 2012 with new photos (Gee, I wonder why? My photos were so good back then, right?)
You can serve over warm angel hair pasta or even spaghetti if it entices your kids to try it, and top with fresh parsley, not just for garnish but taste as well. It really adds a subtle flavor to it. The sauce is strong, anther plus, you simply drizzle a bit over the top of the chicken and the pasta, not drown it like you have to with other sauces, you just need a smidgen of it and it goes a long way!
Happy cooking!
Karlynn
Chicken Piccata
Ingredients
- 4 small chicken breasts butterflied or pounded to 1/2 inch thickness
Coating Ingredients
- 1/2 cup flour
- 2 tablespoons lemon zest
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon pepper
Sauce Ingredients
- 1/4 cup butter
- 1 large garlic clove minced
- 1/2 cup white wine
- 1/2 cup chicken broth
- 2 tablespoons capers rinsed
- 2-3 tablespoons lemon juice
- 4 servings angel hair pasta
- 4 tablespoons parsley to garnish
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 200 °F or use your keep warm button/setting if you have one.
- Combine the ingredients for the coating in a bowl.
- Dredge the chicken in the coating mixture until it's coated.
- Melt the butter on medium heat in a large skillet and add in the chicken. Cook the chicken until browned on both sides, 3 minutes per side, then place in the warm oven to keep warm while you make the sauce.
- If needed, (if the chicken absorbed all of the butter when frying) add another tablespoon of butter to the pan and saute the garlic until browned and fragrant.
- Add in the wine to the skillet and deglaze the brown bits, adding in some of the chicken broth if needed to deglaze it all.
- Once the brown bits are deglazed, add in the rest of the broth and capers.
- Continue to cook until the sauce reduces down for 5-6 minutes then add in the lemon juice. Taste-test and add more lemon juice if desired.
- Place the chicken back into the pan and cook for another 5 minutes. Remove once the chicken has cooked to an internal temperature of 165 °F and plate on top of warm angel hair pasta.
- Drizzle the pan sauces over the chicken and garnish with parsley. Serve.
Notes
- If you want more sauce, feel free to double the amount I use!
Nutrition
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Donna White says
You forgot to add the parmesan cheese to the recipe.
Teresa Jones says
I love your recipes but when I go to print them it says 23 pages! Can you please make the printable a page or two?
Thanks,
tj
Mary Gilhausen says
This was the best dinner that I have made for my sister ‘s family. I think it turned out so yummy because of the variety of flavored ingredients. Usually I stick to recipes that have less things to prepare. But this was quick and easy to prepare and definitely worth it! Thanks for the inspiration.