(calm music) - Chicken Francese is something
I'm very familiar with having grown up in the flower
city, Rochester, New York where the dish originated at a restaurant called the Brown Derby and today, Becky's gonna show
me how she makes her version. - That's right. So the tradition of Francese
means to take a piece of food, dip it in flour and
then egg then pan fry it and serve it with a
lemony beurre blanc sauce. - It's delicious.
- It is, it's really good. Kind of a retro recipe but
we've modernized it a bit so that the flavor is a
little bit more complex, it's a little bit easier to make and it's also a little
bit more economical. - Great. - So let's start with the chicken. I have four six to eight ounce breasts and I've prepped three of them already. We'll do the last one. So the first thing we wanna do is we wanna separate this
thicker end of the breasts from the thinner end like this and I'm gonna cut this thicker
part in half horizontally. So now we have three even sized pieces and I'm just gonna pound
them down a little bit. So I wanna pound these quarter inch thick and the key to pounding is you wanna don't use too much effort. Let the pounder do the work. - You just wanna encourage it.
- That's right. Persuade it. There we go. Our chicken's ready. I'm going to season it
with two teaspoons of salt. We want the salt to penetrate
all the way through the meat, help hold in moisture
and of course season it. And half teaspoon of pepper. We'll let this sit for 15 minutes. I'm gonna go wash my hands and then we'll come back and continue. - [Julia] Great. - It's been 15 minutes so let's
keep going with our chicken. I have 3/4 cup of flour here. I'm gonna work with four pieces at a time and we'll just coat each side in flour, put them onto a wire rack and I didn't need to season the flour. That chicken is beautifully seasoned so it's just plain old flour. Now we'll just keep going until we've got all the pieces coated. All right, I floured all the chickens so it's time to fry them up. I have 1/3 of a cup of olive oil heating over medium high
heat in a skillet here and I'm going to add 1/3
of a cup of vegetable oil. While that heats up,
we'll prepare our eggs. I have three large eggs here. I'm gonna add two tablespoons of water. That's gonna dilute the protein so that they don't
coagulate and turn tough when we cook the eggs. We'll have a nice tender coating. All right, our oil
looks pretty good there. So I'm gonna work with four
pieces of chicken at a time and I'm gonna put them from
the flour into the egg. So let the excess egg drip off. I'm gonna turn that down to medium heat. So we're gonna cook these
about two minutes per side. You want them to get nice and golden. All right, it's been two minutes. Let's see what's going on here. - [Julia] Oh.
- [Becky] That looks lovely. Just want like a nice light golden brown. - [Julia] Beautiful.
- Yeah. So we'll give 'em another
two minutes on this side. Okay, it's been another two minutes so let's just take a
peek, see how they look. Oh, that looks gorgeous.
- [Julia] Oh, beautiful. - [Becky] Very nice, right? - [Julia] Those look
perfect, Becky, perfect. - Okay, I'll cook the rest of the cutlets and will you put these in a
200 degree oven to keep warm? - [Julia] You bet. - Are you ready to take your
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americastestkitchen.com. - All right, all of the
cutlets are in the oven so I'm gonna do a nice
little lemon garnish to go on top of the dish. I dumped out all the oil and wiped it out. I'm gonna start by putting
a tablespoon of butter into my skillet here. - [Julia] Makes sense. - So let that melt a little bit and now we're gonna come over and we're gonna use all parts
of the lemon in the dish. So I'm gonna start by
zesting just half of it, just one side of it. I'm using a rasp grater and I don't wanna get
any of the white pith. I just want the yellow part
and I need just a teaspoon. So that should do it. - [Julia] Perfect. - There we go. All right, now I'm going
to cut the lemon in half and I'm gonna take the
part that I just zested and I'm gonna get juice out of there. I want two tablespoons of juice. So I've got about two
tablespoons of juice there and now we still have this
beautiful half of lemon with the peel still on and I'm gonna cut this into
four quarter inch slices. So we have our butter
heating up over medium heat and I'm gonna put these lemon slices in and we're gonna cook these
for about three minutes until they get nice and
browned on both sides and they're gonna really
develop some nice complexity. - [Julia] And they look pretty. - [Becky] Oh yeah, this is
gonna be a beautiful garnish. Okay, it's been three minutes. Our lemon slices look gorgeous here. - [Julia] I love that smell.
- [Becky] Look at that. - Yeah. Oh, they're beautifully
caramelized, Becky. - That's gonna be such a nice garnish. - Mhm, it adds such complexity to an otherwise simple pan sauce. - That's right, so now let's
keep going with that sauce. I have teaspoon of minced garlic. Gonna saute that for a minute until you start to get that smell. That's when you know it's time to move on. Then I have 1/3 of a cup of dry white wine and we want that to
evaporate almost completely. All right, I've got
the heat on medium high and we're gonna really scrape
up all those brown bits because that has so much flavor. Okay, you can see the wine
is almost fully evaporated. I'm adding a cup and a
half of chicken broth and I want this to reduce
down to exactly 2/3 of a cup. I'm actually gonna measure
it as we go along here 'cause I wanna hit that 2/3 exactly. That's gonna take six to eight minutes. - Okay. - All right, so while that simmers away, I'm gonna make a quick
thickener for the pan sauce. Now, traditionally, old school recipes would call for making a beurre manié. That's where you take flour, mash with butter into kind of a paste. - [Julia] Yep. - We're doing something
a little bit different. We're taking three tablespoons
of cubed cold butter, teaspoon of flour and I'm just gonna coat
those butter cubes in flour just tossing them in there and this we found thickens
the sauce beautifully, gives it a really nice velvety consistency and it's easier to do than
a traditional beurre manié. Okay, so we'll let our sauce
go for about six, eight minutes and then we'll come back. - Okay. - All right, our cutlets
are out of the oven. The sauce is just about
done reducing I think. So I'm just gonna do a couple
last minute things here. I'm gonna cut our beautiful
lemon slices in half. Now, we'll just put these
aside for a garnish. All right, let's measure the
sauce and see how much we have. Remember, we want exactly 2/3 of a cup and it's fine to measure this once or twice while you're cooking to make sure you've got it right. - [Julia] Nice job. - [Becky] Pretty good, right?
- [Julia] Yeah. - The only way to know is
to check so check done. Now I'm gonna turn the heat down to low and I'm adding my teaspoon of lemon zest and I'm waiting to add these at the end because I wanna preserve all
their beautiful volatile oils. Our two tablespoons of lemon juice. And now I'm gonna slowly
whisk in our butter cubes. So just a couple at a time. It's gonna take a minute
and a half or two minutes and we're gonna get a
nice velvety consistency. All right, you see how
beautifully that thickened up? It has the consistency of heavy cream. - Yeah, it is a perfect consistency. - Yeah, it's lovely. I'm gonna add two tablespoons of parsley just to finish it off. I'm gonna kill the heat. Just gonna give this a quick taste. I wanna make sure it's perfect for you. - Yeah, I did set the bar a little high saying I was from Rochester. - I know, I'm nervous. I don't need to be nervous. - [Julia] No?
- It's perfect. Here's our lemon slices. Gonna arrange those on top. All right, I'm just
gonna drizzle the sauce right on top here. - [Julia] That's exactly
what it looks like. - [Becky] Oh, I did it right? - [Julia] Yeah, nailed it.
- [Becky] Yay. - [Julia] Oh, Becky,
I love how that looks. - [Becky] Oh, I'm so happy
you're excited to eat it. - [Julia] Yeah.
- [Becky] I'm gonna make sure you get a nice piece of lemon. - [Julia] Yeah, eating those
caramelized pieces of lemon is just delicious. - [Becky] Mm. How good does that look? Oh my gosh. - [Julia] Restaurant worthy. Becky, this is beautiful. - [Becky] Thank you. - Mm. Mhm, you nailed the coating. It's on the edge between a crumb
coating and an egg coating. It's not flabby. It has a little crisp around the edges but it tastes like egg
and it's nice and thin. - Yeah, it's so thin and tender and then you really get
all that lemon complexity. You get the acidity, you
get the slight bitterness that's really nice. - The white wine coming through. Little bit of garlic. I haven't seen a lot of recipes that serve it with these
caramelized lemons. That is a real trick. - You're eating the lemon, right? You wanna make sure you eat that. That's not just a garnish. That's for eating. - [Julia] Yeah, it's along the
lines of a preserved lemon. You can eat the whole thing. - [Becky] Mhm. - Becky, you nailed it.
- Oh, thank you. - Thank you.
- You're welcome. - You wanna make this
flower city favorite? Start by cutting boneless
skinless chicken breasts into cutlets. Dilute the egg with a little
water for a thin coating. Make a punchy lemon sauce and thicken it with flour
coated cubes of butter. From America's Test Kitchen, a perfect recipe for chicken Francese. Really, you did the city proud. - Glad to hear it.
- Mm. We hope you enjoyed this video as much as we enjoyed making it. - Don't forget to hit that Like button and subscribe to our channel. - And if you're ready to take your cooking to the next level, head over to americastestkitchen.com and get a free all
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and download our app. - [Julia] With unlimited access to over 14,000 of our test kitchen recipes and 8,000 product reviews, you'll have everything you
need to cook and learn. - So I ask, what are you waiting for? - Let's make something great together.
