Our Favorite Easy Chicken Marsala Recipe
What makes ours the very best chicken Marsala recipe out there? Well, we can’t exactly take full credit for how delicious chicken Marsala is, because the recipe has been around for a long time. But our chicken Marsala recipe is easy, weeknight-friendly and truly next-level delicious! You can serve it over pasta or polenta to really soak up all of the mushroom-y, creamy Marsala sauce, and to round it out into a complete meal. The rich flavors and simplicity of preparation make this dish one that always seems to work its way onto our meal plans. Like our Chicken Dijon, it's cozy and comforting and familiar, it’s sure to brighten up those dusky winter weeknights.
What Is Chicken Marsala?
Chicken Marsala is a classic Italian recipe that likely dates back, in some form, to as far back as the 1800s. The “Marsala” refers to the Marsala wine, which is a Sicilian fortified wine and it’s rich, slightly sweet, nutty flavor is what defines this heady and hearty chicken recipe. Meaty mushrooms and a splash of cream make this classic chicken recipe absolutely a perfect fit for the colder months. Sweet, earthy, rich and easy, this chicken Marsala recipe isn’t just for weeknights—it’s also a fabulous quick hit for your next dinner party. Pair with some wine, a good playlist and some drippy candles and you’ve got yourself a gosh darn dreamy dinner party!
Chicken Marsala Ingredients
If this is your first time making chicken Marsala, tracking down a bottle of Marsala might seem like a chore, but it’s actually super easy to find! While you could go to a fancy wine shop and hunt down a nice bottle of Sicilian Marsala, you can usually find Marsala at the grocery store! Just look wherever you’d buy cooking sherry, or you can always ask in a pinch. As for the mushrooms, it’s OK to use whatever common grocery store mushrooms you prefer—white button or cremini will both work well here. Here’s everything you’ll need to make our easy chicken Marsala recipe:
Chicken breasts
All-purpose flour
Olive oil
Unsalted butter
Shallot
Mushrooms
Fresh garlic
Fresh thyme
Chicken stock
Marsala wine
Heavy cream
Chives
How To Make Chicken Marsala
Fileting the chicken breasts is simple enough to do—simply cut them in half horizontally. But! To make your life even easier, one of our favorite tricks for cutting raw meat is giving the meat a little time in the freezer before we cut it. A super sharp knife and a semi-frozen chicken breast will make splitting them in half a total breeze. And remember—a super sharp knife means that you are actually working more safely! A dull knife is much more dangerous than a sharp one. We like this knife sharpener, if you need one! Or, you can always look for local knife-sharpening events—most kitchenware stores offer them with some frequency.
Dredge the chicken in flour.
Fry the chicken breasts in butter and olive oil. Things are already beginning to smell really good, and it’s only going to get better!
Sauté the shallots and mushrooms, then add the garlic and thyme. Now it’s smelling really, really good in your kitchen.
Marsala sauce time! Pour in the stock, Marsala wine and cream and simmer the Marsala sauce for about 10 minutes.
Bring it all together! Add the chicken, and simmer everything together to allow the sauce to thicken and the chicken to cook through. This will take about 5 minutes.
Serve! Over pasta, or with polenta or good bread, or even just as-is!
The Best Chicken Marsala Sauce
That classic, mushroom-dotted, creamy chicken marsala sauce (similar to our Chicken Fricassee or Pork Chops with Mushroom Cream Sauce) is one of the many reasons we love this recipe. It’s so very simple to make and so very hard to mess up—a terrific combo. There are a few tricks to making the very best chicken marsala sauce:
As you add cream or stock to the pan, take time to really scrape up any little bits of mushroom or shallot that have stuck to the bottom of the skillet.
Use the best chicken stock you can! Homemade, if you’ve got it!
Give the sauce time. We don’t mean a lot of time, but don’t cut down on the simmer times we call for—you want to give the cream sauce time to reduce and thicken. All that wine-y, mushroomy goodness will be worth the (short) wait.
What To Serve With Chicken Marsala
So many things go with chicken marsala. It’s so flavorful and satisfying, it doesn’t need much accompaniment to become a hearty and lovely supper. Our very favorite thing to serve with chicken marsala is pasta—twirl the noodles around your fork with a bite of tender, Marsala sauced chicken and maybe catch a mushroom in there, too! But it’s also lovely served over a bed of creamy polenta. If you’re hoping to keep things a little more low-carb, that’s easy enough to do. Simply serve the chicken Marsala with a green salad on the side and call dinner good to go, or, if you’re really wanting to be ambitious, try it with our cauliflower gnocchi!
Tools You’ll Need:
Tongs are useful
Meat mallet (or something similarly heavy and flat)
More Easy Chicken Breast Recipes
We’ve actually rounded up our 60 favorite chicken breast recipes before, so if you want to go deep, click here. BUT, if you want to know our five weeknight go-tos, here they are:
The Fastest, Best Chicken Dinner Recipe We Know
Chicken Marsala is one of our favorite recipes to share with others because it is so easy to make perfectly and even newbie cooks will feel really good about their kitchen skills after making something as delicious as this! When you try it, let us know how it all turns out, OK? Share a photo and tag us on Instagram using @themodernproper and #themodernproper so that we can see your stuff! Happy eating!
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