Piccata di pollo (Chicken Piccata) (2024)

Scaloppine dishes are some of the most quintessential everyday secondi piatti in the Italian repertoire. Thin slices of meat are lightly floured then quickly sautéed in a skillet, which is deglazed with wine to form a quick and tasty sauce. Lightening fast but also super-tasty, with a touch of elegance, scalloppine are equally suited for quick weekday meals or special occasions. It’s no wonder they are a favorite among home cooks and restaurants alike.

The piccata is a special sub-category of scaloppine dishes where the sauce includes not only the usual white wine, but also a squeeze of fresh lemon juice, capers and parsley, lending it particular color and zest.

Piccata di pollo, or Chicken Piccata, isn’t a particularly common dish in Italy, where scaloppine are typically made with veal. But, of course, it’s enormously popular here in America. And for good reason—it’s one of the tastiest ways to prepare chicken breast. Done right, a piccata di pollo is moist and flavorful, even if you’re working with a less than exemplary supermarket bird.

Ingredients

For 4-6 servings:

• 4-6 chicken breasts
• Flour
• Salt and pepper
• Butter or olive oil, or a mixture of both

To make the pan sauce:

• 200 ml (3/4 cup) white wine
• The juice of one lemon, freshly squeezed
• A handful of capers
• Salt
• A knob of butter
• A few sprigs of parsley, finely chopped

Directions

Begin by removing the small tenderloin from each chicken breast, that small muscle on the undersid of the breast. Slice chicken breast horizontally, so that you wind up with two fillets per breast of roughly equal thickness. If your breast is especially large then you may want to slice it into three scallops.

Take each slice, place it between two sheets of parchment paper, then pound it gently with a meat pounder or the back of a skillet. Do the same with the tenderloin. The resulting scalloppine should be quite thin, about 1/2 cm or 1/4 inch.

Lightly flour the scalloppine. Heat a skillet with olive oil and a knob of butter over moderate heat. When the butter has melted and stopped bubbling, add the scalloppine and brown them lightly on both sides. Season them with salt on both sides, giving them a final turn as you do. Remove and keep warm.

Pour the white wine into the skillet and scrap up the bottom of the skillet. Let the wine simmer for a minute or two, then add the freshly squeezed lemon juice and capers.

Return the scalloppine to the pan and turn them in the sauce for just a few moments, until they’re heated through and the sauce has thickened a bit. Transfer the scalloppine to a serving dish or platter.

Turn off the flame. Swirl in the butter and minced parsley into the sauce until it reaches a creamy consistence. Pour over the scalloppine and top with some additional minced parsley if you like.

Serve immediately.

Notes

Perhaps the most important point to bear in mind when preparing a piccata di pollo is to make sure the slices are nice and thin. This not only allows them to cook quickly, but also ensures the right balance between meat and sauce so every bite is full of flavor. The typical chicken breast needs slicing in half, but some larger breasts—and these days chicken breasts can be truly enormous—will need slicing in thirds. It’s also usually a good idea to flatten the breast. Not only does this ensure a thinner slice, but the pounding tenderizes the meat. Go gentle, however. You don’t want to smash your scaloppine or they may break apart.

Another point to bear mind: Make sure your flame is nice and high so the chicken browns before it overcooks in the middle. But not so high, of course, that you burn the butter.

It is also important to reduce the sauce to the right consistency, just thick enough to coat the scallops nicely, but not so thick that the thing becomes stodgy.

Finally, for North American readers: I find that Wondra flour works especially well here. Wondra’s fine texture helps the meat to brown nicely, and the light coating helps thickens the sauce without any hint of stodginess, which can sometimes happen when you use regular flour.

Variations

Scaloppine is to second courses what pasta is to first courses: almostinfinitely variable. Chicken is itself a kind of variation, since classicscaloppineare made with veal. Turkey scaloppine are a common variation in Italy (much more so than chicken) as is the use of pork loin, which is quite similar to veal in taste and texture, but much less expensive.

But the real variety comes from the multitude of sauces you can nap your scalloppine with. Perhaps the most common scaloppine dish is made withMarsala wine.But you can also nap your scaloppine with tomato sauce, balsamic vinegar, cream and mushrooms, olives, sautéed zucchini… you name it.

The classic Roman variation of scaloppine with prosciutto and sage is the scrumptioussaltimbocca. It means ‘jump in your mouth’ because it’s so good that you’ll want to wolf it down.

And our American readers may well recognize a close resemblance between piccata di pollo and an Italian-American classic, Chicken Francese. Quite close in technique, it eschews the capers and leans heavily into the lemon. Not just the juice mind you, but slices as well.

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