welcome friends today we're taking another run at chicken marsala a couple
of weeks ago on our Saturday morning show where we make what are the most
watched recipe videos on YouTube we made chicken marsala from the top recipe
video or the one that was watched the most and quiet frankly the recipe I'm
not gonna say it sucked but it wasn't great
it was bland had a very OneNote type thing it was one of those dishes where
when we sat down for dinner I felt like I was a little kid looking at my mom and
dad saying do I have to finish it cuz you know it just wasn't it just wasn't
there's no punch one note very dull one note dish so the idea is that I went
back to the drawing board and I went out and I looked at probably 50 55 or 60
different recipes for chicken marsala and what I realized was pre-1970 there
was a lot of variation in this recipe and then it just sort of became stagnant
one or two different ways but prior to that there was a lot of different stuff
in this dish now in reality it's called chicken marsala
so obviously chicken and marsala play a predominant role but what I found with
the recipe we did last week was they they played the only role and the dish
needs more balanced you have to have a balance between salt and fat acid and it
had no acid and it had very little fat and very little salt so here's what I'm
doing different this time I started out the same with the chicken cutlets and I
pounded them flat I butterflied them and then pounded them flat and instead of
salt and pepper in the flour i salt and peppered the actual chicken first so
that there's some salt and pepper flavor on the chicken not just sort of
in the flour and so I'm dredging the chicken pieces in the flour to coat them
next up I've got a cast iron frying pan here brought up the temperature it's
going to get a little bit of olive oil and a little bit of butter
there was no butter in the last one I'm putting the butter in for flavor and the
olive oil also is going to bring flavor in I'm putting both in for flavor so
we'll melt that down to get that going and then we'll very quickly fry off
these chicken cutlets
so I've got the chicken browned on both sides you don't need to cook it all the
way through you just want to kind of get some brown and some flavor on the
outside we're gonna cook it all the way through a couple steps from now so we
take that out and just set it aside into the pan I'm gonna put a little bit more
butter the butter is flavor and I've got chopped mushrooms I'm gonna stick those
in and we're just gonna cook those down until they release their moisture now
the changes I'm making from last time some of them show up very early in the
development of this recipe and one of them is shallots so I've got a couple of
minced shallots a lot of the contemporary recipes use garlic I'm
gonna put the garlic in because I think it really will bring something to the
dish and even though we're using a dry marsala it's still really sweet and in
order to counteract that sweetness I wanted to put an acid in and I was torn
I've seen a lot of recipes that used lemon juice and I think lemon would
bring a really nice bright acidity as well as some citrus flavor and the other
was to use a vinegar and I I've gone back and forth over the last little
while about the vinegar should I use white wine vinegar because the grapes
even though this is a really dark wine the grapes used are white grapes and so
white wine I think would bring a bright acidity without adding any other flavors
and the other choice would be to use a balsamic vinegar but I kind of thought
the flavor profile between the balsamic and the marsala would be too close since
they're both aged for a very long time in wood and so I thought they they they
both share sort of that sweet flavor profile that I kind of wanted to avoid
this time so I've got the shallots and the garlic in I'm just gonna cook the
garlic a little bit longer the mushrooms have have gone down to
almost nothing at this point there so now we put in the marsala and I'll just
bring that up to a simmer just to cook off that alcohol flavor now one of the
other things I found last time was that by the time you sort of reduce them our
solid down there's not much sauce left and I wanted to have a little bit more
sauce to coat the chicken and you can counteract that by putting in more
marsala but that just sort of amped up that marsala flavor that overly sort of
cloying sweet flavor which I didn't want to do so when I deboned and took the
skin off of these chicken breasts I put them in this pot with an onion and a
little bit of water and it's been simmering here for about a half an hour
and that is just to get some chicken stock to pour in here now of course you
don't have to do that this seems like a step too far to you don't bother just
use chicken stock that you buy at the supermarket so we're just gonna let this
simmer down and reduce a little bit before I move on to the next step okay
looking good I always tell people at every stage give it a taste yeah a lot
more balance there already than what we had last time I'm gonna put just a
little bit of pepper and maybe a little sprinkle of salt and to finish the sauce
I'm gonna put in a little bit more butter and a few gloves of the vinegar
mix that in give it another taste I've got a whole jug of these tasting spoons
back there yeah so the vinegar has rounded out the flavor cut some of the
sweetness from the wine and that last pad of butter has added a nice round
mouthfeel coats your mouth really nicely so the chicken goes back into the pan
and we just cook it through the rest of the way
so Glenn you have been busy adapting the other recipe I believe this
is an improved chicken marsala the purists may say it's not chicken marsala
because I've added too many things but you have adapted a basic chicken marsala
recipe to suit you to suit me flavor hopefully it suits you too you know and
I think that's an important part of cooking is there's a there's a need for
sometimes the dogma yes but the reality is if you don't like it then why why
just change it and make it something that you want that you want to eat all
right so I see you've got some onions in this one yes so sure lots o serration
martial arts not lots of shallots just some short shallots
cuz I know that someone's going to tell me that I said it wrong yeah tomato
tomahto shallots shallots yep
mm-hmm
it's got a kind of a it's got a fuller flavor like it's like I can still taste
the marsala yep it's right there but it seems like it's got a creamy
texture to it mm-hmm so I'm assuming you added some cream or some butter butter
okay cream definitely you could add some cream that globular not globular but
that large molecule it changes the mouthfeel it makes mix it makes it more
pleasant to eat a little bit of garlic in there I taste a little bit of garlic
and some vinegar just take that acid to cut yeah the fat yes
well the fat and the sweet from the marsala so nice so I I think for us this
is a better version and you know what you need to play with it make it once
maybe you don't like are like leave the garlic out maybe you don't want to buy
Sherlock's cuz you know you don't want to buy shallots and you've got an onion
maybe you think some steamed asparagus kind of tossed on top at the end would
be really good cuz I actually think it would be really good I had been looking
for dried porcini mushrooms because I thought dried porcini mushrooms in with
all of this would add an extra layer of flavor I think I think this is one of
those recipes said as long as you've got chicken and you've got Marsala wine
you're good to go you can call it chicken marsala we give you permission
thanks for stopping by see you consumed
you