Restaurant-Worthy Chicken Marsala and Copycat Rao's Lemon Chicken

[Music] today on America's Test Kitchen Bridget and Julia make perfect chicken marsala Adam reviews manual citrus juicers with Julia and Aaron makes Bridget a game-changing skillet roasted chicken and lemon sauce it's all coming up right here on America's Test Kitchen the first recipe I ever developed here in the Test Kitchen was for chicken marsala and I'm not gonna lie I was a little nervous back then and I tested that recipe dozens of times and at the end I was really proud of it well I remember that you cooked it right here on the show 16 years ago that was season 2 and I always loved that version but nowadays I don't make it so much anymore because that sauce is just a little too sweet for me yeah well we're wiser we're a lot hotter do you know it and our expectations for you to have grown as well we want more complexity in our marsala sauce that's where we're going to start so we are starting with 2 cups of dry marsala this time ah so we're gonna put this right into our large saucepan and next up its 1 ounce of dried porcini mushrooms nones of flavor we rinse these just to get all that dirt off the surface now we also want more body and our sauce we wanted to have a lot of cling ability so it's very to the chicken I like that word adding 4 teaspoons of unflavored gelatin so as this cooks it's going to give that saw some really nice body all right so I'm going to bring this up to the boil over high heat now once it's at a boil I'm gonna reduce that just a little bit down to medium-high we'll let this simmer until this mixture is all reduced by half it's gonna take about six to eight minutes hmm we're done simmering the Marsala wine at this point I'm going to go ahead and pour this into a fine mesh strainer mmm get rid of those mushrooms we just needed them for flavor we don't want them for texture all right I'm gonna let that sit so now we're going to continue with that pan sauce I've got 2 cups of chicken broth we'll add that to the pan now that we've reduced that marsala mixture if you wouldn't mind getting that for me as well you got it hey you are that goes right into the sauce so you're gonna let me do it absolutely there you go thank you so I'll mix this together now we'll bring this up to a boil then I'll reduce the heat again down to medium-high I'm gonna let this simmer until it's reduced down to one and a half cups that should take about 10 to 12 minutes let's get to the chicken and we are going to create our own cutlets and I think you have a present I do I know these these are the chicken cutlets that are made by taking a boneless skinless chicken breast and cutting them in half horizontally when you wind up with is a very ragged end like this and on this side it's maybe three times the thickness so they never cook at the same rate that's right but we have found a much better technique for creating chicken cutlets and this to me is a game changer it is alright so we're gonna work with these one at a time these are for six to eight ounce boneless skinless chicken breasts now we're going to cut each of these crosswise right about at the middle so you're separating the thin half from the thicker half that's right so now we have this thicker half now we can cut this thicker half horizontally all the way through so now they're pretty evenly sized it's brilliant it was probably some sort of engineer that came up with it probably was now this to me is a total GameChanger and I'm never gonna cut chicken cutlets that old way again all right now if I look through here most of them are of even thickness mm-hmm but this one's a bit thicker and this one and this one in this one so we're gonna pound these out a little bit of plastic wrap just until they're even with those it's about a half inch thick all right so these going to go right into a bowl we're going to season these with two teaspoons of kosher salt and a half a teaspoon of black pepper I'll just take a pair of tongs and toss these until they're coated with the salt and the pepper that really it's the salt that's going to do the work so that salt is going to work its way into the meat and help to keep them juicy later on and with chicken marsala you dredge those cutlets in flour and then pan saute them hmm and that's what I have here 3/4 cup of all-purpose flour and I'm going to get our skillet heat it this is two tablespoons of vegetable oil and we'll go ahead and heat this up need I'm high heat we want to get that pan and that oil really really hot until ripping hot ripping hot I love it when you say that joy until that oil starts to smoke okay in the meantime pair of tongs so we don't get too messy by we I guess I'm use me or you know that I love to get messy when I cook when I cook there's just stuff all over me head to toe I love that all right so we're gonna put these cutlets right in the flour make sure it's well coated and then we're really gonna shake it off we don't want too much flour on there that's one of the things that can give the chicken kind of a gummy do that alright let's take these one at a time place them in the flour flip them make sure that they're completely coated you are not dropping a speck of that flour I'm really impressed with your technique what you're a very clean cook well this is my phone hand hello nice and clean alright that is number six I'm gonna leave the rest of them in there six here six there mm-hmm will cook them in two batches I think the pan is pretty hot yep see you in a few wisps of smoke there so I'm gonna turn that heat down to medium we don't want these chicken cutlets to cook too quickly place them right in there nice gentle simmer and that is going to go fast really on this first side going to take about one to two minutes until they're just lightly golden brown all right two minutes on that first side let's go ahead and flip them over mmm same thing we're not looking for tons of color here that flavors gonna come in the sauce well let this cook another two to three minutes on the second side and in the meantime I would go ahead and dredge the other chicken sounds good alright second batch coming out those look terrific don't say it's really hard to get browning on small pieces of chicken like that because they cook so quickly absolutely right but what's great is there's a little bit of bonding in the bottom of the skillet that's also going to help us with our sauce I do want to turn the heat down to medium-low because now we're going to add the magic ingredient mmm pancetta yes we tried all different kinds of pork but pancetta is pretty standard in this recipe and without it we really didn't want to live anymore did you just stir that all right about four minutes is what looking for and so it gets really nice and crispy in the meantime I'm gonna go ahead and slice some cremini mushrooms no this is a pound they do have a little bit of a deeper flavor than the white button mushrooms I do want to trim these just the bottom a little bit we're gonna keep the stems on already prepped most of these and now I'm gonna slice these pretty thin no you can find it supermarket or a white button mushroom that's fine with recipe will work all right so how's the pancetta doing it's gorgeous it's nice and golden brown almost looks like candy I kind of want to just go in there and eat it it's not bad well it's dangerous at this point it's really really hot now that is a lot of mushrooms yes they're gonna cook down to very little they're actually lose a lot of their liquid but we've won a lot of mushrooms or a lot of flavor so I'll toss this together now this is going to cook for about eight minutes we're gonna crank up that heat up to medium-high oh that looks good and then that liquid is going to evaporate that's gonna take about eight minutes look a lot different the next time you see it these are ready to go they look delicious I think great we're going to take out the mushrooms and the pancetta using a slotted spoon because I want that fat to remain in the pan we're gonna use it all right that looks good enough what do you think it looks great all right so we're gonna put this back over the heat another teaspoon of vegetable oil and one minced shallot we're near the finish line Julia yeah this looks like the beginnings of the pan sauce that's exactly right so we've made our concentrate a little bit earlier yeah and now we're just building that sauce right in the pan so this is gonna go about a minute until the shallots are starting to soften all right next up little tomato paste without in the sauce was just too thin both in texture and in flavor this is a tablespoon and we're gonna go ahead and add one minced garlic clove at this point not too much no not too much really isn't about the garlic now this only needs about 30 seconds to cook all right this is looking great could you add that reduced Marsala mixture I've got it Oh oh that smells amazing and this is that long cooked marsala remember we've reduced it I'm going to add a little bit more right at the end yeah a little nip at the end this is a quarter cup more of our dry marsala just so we remember what we're cooking with right and you can actually smell that fresh marsala has that bright flavor all right a little bit of lemon juice 2 teaspoons again for brightness and a teaspoon of fresh oregano not the dried stuff here we don't want it to taste like pizza sauce this is coming up to a simmer I'll crank that heat and now I'm going to add the chicken cutlets right back into that pan there we go now we're bringing this up to a full simmer we're gonna let that go for 3 minutes and this is by design we actually want some of that flour that's on the chicken to kind of break away in the simmer it's kind of thicken that sauce and we won't get a gummy coating on the chicken so it's three minutes here about halfway through it I'll flip those cutlets over that smells amazing that smells done on a pretty little platter now back to the sauce it's off heat at this point gonna finish it with three tablespoons of unsalted butter well you always finish the sauce with a little bit of butter adds that richness and as a glossy Sheen as a finish he's my favorite of oisin brothers that sauce is looking beautiful when you whisk like you own it you like that mm-hmm all right so now a little bit of parsley and we're gonna put our mushroom and pancetta mixture right back in there oh man where it belongs now that is a sauce I'll say so I'll spoon some of the sauce right over the chicken oh hello here you go honey there who's your friend you are it's the extra sauce that told me so hmm this is better than my version sixteen years ago because the sauce has a much more complex flavor with porcini x' and then those cremini mushrooms the tomato paste the shallots the pancetta Bridget this is a fabulous version of chicken marsala thank you so much Don so for more grown-up and savory tasting chicken marsala use a dry Marsala wine and reduce it down with some gelatin and dried porcini mushrooms for body and flavor then finish the sauce with a splash more Marsala some lemon juice and a little butter just before serving so there you have it from America's Test Kitchen to your kitchen oh why is there a more mature version of chicken marsala [Music] when life gives you lemons well that's when you know you need a good citrus juicer and Adams here to tell us which brand is worth buying you know Julia we've been using this citrus juicer in the Test Kitchen for ages problem is it proved a lot less durable that we were hoping for they chip the enamel cracks you end up with little pieces of enamel in your lemonade so we're gonna get rid of that and go back to the drawing board with a lineup of 12 different citrus trees a lot they're priced from 6 dollars up to 23 dollars and change and because there were a lot of citrus juicers we juiced a lot of lemons and limes we used 50 pieces of fruit for most of these let me show you the first one this that looks suspect to me you have a good eye it's a spout that you are supposed to stand right into a whole piece of fruit you screw it in and then you squeeze away well squeezed that looks like a good hand look at it takes a Herculean effort to get any juice out of a piece of fruit with that and you squeezed and squeezed and squeezed there's still a ton of juice left in there testers not impressed let's move on to style number two which are these - these are handheld Reimers super-familiar it worked a little better than that still not great they splatter juice all over the place they so do it's almost like a counter cleaner at the end you just rub it in get a nice fresh citrusy smell except for the seeds that they've dropped all over the place testers not very impressed with these these ones are tabletop dreamers worked a little bit better we got about 13 percent more juice out of these because they're more stable they're more secure you can press a little bit harder they have these grates in the top to catch the seeds we can still do better all right the last type are these these are the presses now it's the type that we used to really like we still like this if you haven't used one of these they can be a little counterintuitive because it looks like you would just take the lemon half and pop it in and nothing's gonna happen there what you really have to do is open it up and put the fruit in cut side down and then you squeeze and this illustrates it's one of the problems with this particular juicer look a standard lemon 1/2 fitting testers had to quarter the lemons to get them in here hail they also thought that this big wide sort of squared handle not as comfortable as it could possibly be I want you to try this guy here some lemon juice well he's handsome he's definitely handsome he has a nice working hinge there oh holy cow that's a lot of lemon juice out of half a lemon so this was the winner there are a couple of things we really liked about this first were these slots on the bottom instead of holes which direct the juice in a nice steady flow they limit splattering there's no overflowing testers thought that the handle was really comfortable to grip and we went back to that durability question you know I said that we tested 50 pieces of fruit except for this one where we tested 200 pieces of a lot of lemon juice and not a sign of wear on this thing it was great this is the chef in fresh for citrus juicer it was $23 and change and it's our new winner pretty cool so there you have it if you're in the market for a new citrus juicer check out the chef and fresh for citrus juicer at just $23 restaurant kitchens are built for speed for instance the salamander a high-output broiler that Browns food in seconds and it's integral from making a very famous dish Rao's lemon chicken but the home kitchen is far from the restaurant kitchen there's no salamander no buckets of fresh lemon juice around and it's hard to find teeny-tiny chickens that are necessary for this recipe but Aaron has mastered the art of recipe translation is going to show us how to bring this great restaurant dish into our home kitchen yes I am Bridget I'm gonna walk you through all the solutions great we're gonna start with the chicken perfect okay so as you mentioned teeny tiny chickens are hard to find across the country so we actually just landed on using three pounds of chicken parts so we're gonna start with the chicken breasts as you can see the chicken breast is thick on one end and thin on the other ends I'm gonna cut this in half and the reason why I'm doing this is so that it cooks evenly in the oven now we're gonna move on to our chicken quarter so we're just gonna split this in half and there's a little natural fat line right there and I'm just gonna slice right through that like butter like butter like butter and the chicken thigh has a little pockets of fat and I'm just gonna trim those pockets of fat out of there we had the option of brining our chicken or salting our chicken we chose brining I'm going to add a half a cup of table salt to two quarts of cold water I'm just gonna whisk that up until the salt dissolves and I'm gonna add my chicken all right so we're gonna brine this in the refrigerator for about 30 to 60 minutes so Bridget I've taken the chicken out of the brine and I patted it dry and now we're gonna get you our cooking I've worked in a ton of restaurants and I've used a lot of salamanders and they're awesome but we don't have a salamander in the Test Kitchen do you have one I barely have a broiler at home I have to lie down on my kitchen floor and hold the drawer up so we needed to come up with a method that would give us that really brown beautiful crisp skin that salamander would give us I have a 12-inch skillet over medium-high heat with a teaspoon of oil and they're heating up and I'm gonna Pat my check and drive one more time so what wroking for is oil to just start smoking oh yeah so we're gonna cook the skin side down anytime you cook in a hot pan you always want to put foods down away from you or it doesn't flatter at you all right so we're gonna brown the skin side down for about eight to ten minutes and so that fat renders out in this game that's really crisp and golden brown now it might look like we've overcrowded this family put all the chicken in one batch but that is by design Aaron was very smart she heated up the pan and the oil to the point was that the oil was just smoking that means that both the pan and the oil are hot enough to brown all the chicken all at once so these have brown for about eight minutes on the skin side down ready oh yeah got a beautiful brown chicken pot in fact son I'm gonna remove only the breast meat from the pan dark meat needs a little bit more time to get to the temperature than the white meat does so we found that just by leaving the dark meat in the pan for an extra three to five minutes and browning the second side helps we synchronize the cooking effects so that they came out at the same time okay Bridget we have brown the chicken for about three minutes it's just the dark meat and see how nice and brown that is on the bottom yep pour out this chicken fat so we're gonna take two tablespoons of unsalted butter one shallot minced one garlic clove minced and we're gonna cook these just for about thirty seconds until fragrant and the moisture from the shallots and the butter is gonna help to deglaze all that fun that we have in the pan oh really nice done as soon as you added shallots and the garlic yeah yeah now we're talking then now we're gonna add four teaspoons of flour this is gonna thicken our sauce now a lot of sauces are thickened at the end but we're gonna do the reverse I'm gonna cook this for about one minute now we're gonna add one cup of chicken broth sir Reyes uses about two cups of lemon juice in their chicken and their chicken is amazing but we're just gonna use one quarter of a cup of lemon juice we found that this was all that we needed for that lemon kick that we wanted so now we're gonna cook this just for about two minutes or so until it thickens up and get slightly reduced okay so this is reduced for about two to three minutes and as you can see the liquid has gotten nice and thick so we're gonna add one tablespoon of lemon zest to our sauce this is how you were able to reduce from two cups exact down to a quarter cup yeah I went to a different part of the lemon and lemon zester can really hold up to the heat of Evan the flavor compounds just kind of stick with it can be always that beautiful that is amazing since you are in a Lemon Grove right yes yeah okay so now we're gonna add our chicken back to the pan and it's really important that you keep that nice beautiful crisp skin skin side up we don't want that sauce to sock it out we spent all that time getting it nice and brown so we don't want to go backwards okay so now we're just gonna add leftover chicken juices from the resting chicken so much flavor with a lot of flavor turn off the heat and we're gonna go into a 475 degree oven and we're gonna cook this for about ten minutes until the white meat cooks to 160 and the dark meat cooks to 175 oh look at that and that beautiful chicken wow that's resting we're gonna make a fresh garnish okay so I'm gonna take a teaspoon of fresh oregano leaves a tablespoon of fresh parsley leaves and a teaspoon of lemon zest just to give it a little bit of fresh fruity flavor okay so I'm just gonna chop this up voila we're finished beautifully okay so we're gonna take the chicken is rested nicely for about five minutes resting the chicken right in the pan it makes so much sense because we take it out of the roasting pan let it rest on the side there's always tons of juice that comes out of it letting it stay in that sauce we know exactly where all that juice is gonna go exactly okay so you feel that bond that builds up in the oven yes I do we're gonna bring that back into the sauce all right so now I'm just whisking this so that it's nice and emulsified and I'm gonna add half of my herb mixture to the sauce and the other half I'm gonna sprinkle over the chicken all right we want to keep our skin really crisp so I'm just gonna pour half of the sauce around the chicken and I'm gonna put the other half in the bowl you can serve it alongside this is great also served with egg noodles or rice or steamed potatoes yeah how'd we do I have to say I was a little bit worried with just a quarter cup of lemon juice there's plenty of lemon flavor in here on that skin it's almost like chicken chips Erin this was the best lemon chicken I've ever had you Bridget so our version of Rao's lemon chicken translates a great restaurant recipe for the home kitchen swap in chicken parts for a hard-to-find small chickens Brown the chicken in a skillet and finish it in the oven and our great lemon sauce the variation we boosted it with lemon zest and there you have it from our Test Kitchen to your kitchen skillet roasted chicken in lemon to us and you can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season along with our tastings testings and selected episodes on our website americastestkitchen.com thanks for watching America's Test Kitchen what you think we'll leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or you can just say hello you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our Channel see you later I'll see you later

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 552,467

Keywords: america's test kitchen, chicken, how to, recipes, cooking, chicken marsala, lemon chicken, rao's, raos lemon chicken, raos lemon sauce, raos lemon chicken cooks illustrated, public television shows, cooking show, chicken marsala recipes

Id: 1XPSXABHDng

Length: 22min 16sec (1336 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 31 2018