Chicken Parmesan is one of those dishes that looks impressive in the end while requiring little work to produce. The secret is in the prep and setting up the ‘assembly line’.
Anyone that has cooked for a decent sized group of people knows that the key to (sanely & efficiently) completing repetitive tasks is a good assembly line. For chicken parmesan all you really need are four stations: The Chicken, The Flour, The Oil, and The Rack.
Station 1: The Chicken
For the chicken, you want to maximize surface area. Doing this will increase the breading-to-chicken ratio making a crispier bite. This is especially important when you want some crunch after dousing it in tomato sauce.
Start with removing excess water from the chicken by patting it with paper towels. To keep the mess to a minimal, place a chicken breast on a piece of plastic wrap. Fold the plastic wrap over the chicken once as if you were making a plastic wrap greeting card. You don’t want to wrap the chicken so tight that it explodes out of the wrap once you begin flattening it. If you don’t have a meat tenderizer, you can place the chicken and plastic wrap between two cutting boards (or any two flat objects) and gently pound the top object with something with some weight to it (a large soup can works). I’ve found that starting from the center of the chicken breast and moving outward results in a more uniform flattened breast.
Station 2: The Flour
For the breading all you really need is some seasoned flour in a dish large enough be able to place a flattened chicken breast in and have room to work with. You can get creative with the flour, but I usually stick the the following:
- All purpose flour
- Garlic powder
- Onion powder
- Oregano (dried)
- Cayenne
- Salt
- Pepper
I like to use some pressure when packing the flour onto the chicken to create a nice coating. I’ve found that coating the next breast as soon as you drop the previous one into the oil gives it enough time to rest and let the flour really bind to the chicken. This keeps the flour coating from falling off when transporting to the frying pan.
Station 3: The Oil
Nothing too special about this station. You want to have a large pan with enough oil to fry half or more of the breast per side I normally choose peanut oil because of the slightly nutty flavor it gives the breading. It shouldn’t really matter what type of oil you use as long as it’s not extra virgin olive oil. Frying with expensive oil is normally just a waste of money.
Heat the oil up on med-high, getting it as hot as you can without smoking. The point here is to crisp the breading and lock-in the juices of the chicken. Just fry the breasts on each side until the breading is a nice golden brown.
Station 4: The Rack
This is another simple station. All you need here is a cookie sheet with a cooling/baking rack inside of it. As you finish flash-frying the chicken place them here to drain excess oil. Be sure to put paper towels underneath to catch the oil draining. You won’t want the excess oil in the bottom of the cookie sheet when you pop them into the oven to finish baking. Once you have all of the chicken breast ready to go into the oven, cover them in grated parmesan. Pop the rack into an oven pre-heated at 400 for 15-20 minutes. You want to make sure the chicken is completely cooked and get the parmesan to melt and crisp on the chicken.
Serve the chicken parmesan over your favorite noodle and sauce (I normally stick to angel hair or spaghetti). Store bought sauce can be a great time saver and just as unique as homemade if you add you’re own spices while heating it up. I’ll save my homemade marinara recipe for another time. Enjoy!