Creamy Chicken Marsala Recipe

Chicken marsala is something recipe developer Jennine Bryant describes as "a traditional Italian-American dish, packed with flavor and easy to throw together." While she admits that cream is an ingredient that is not always found in chicken marsala, it's one she always likes to use as she feels it makes the dish so much better. As she explains, "I love it with the addition of the cream [as] it softens the sauce and makes it silky and creamy."

Bryant's version of chicken marsala makes for a rich, creamy, and filling dish. The sauce doesn't just add flavor to the chicken, though, but seems to improve the texture as well — Bryant calls it "lovely and succulent," and feels this meal is sufficiently impressive to make for a dinner party entrée. It comes together pretty quickly, though, so it's not the type of complicated preparation that will force you to stay in the kitchen half the night when you could be socializing, instead.

Besides the chicken breasts, the key ingredient here is marsala, a type of fortified wine that Bryant says "creates a wonderful rich and deep sweetness." You'll also need flour, garlic powder, salt, and pepper for coating the chicken; olive oil and butter for cooking it; and whipping cream, chicken stock, fresh garlic, and mushrooms for the sauce. Any type of mushrooms will work here — brown, white, or even wild ones, as long as they're not, you know, the poisonous kind.

Begin by slicing the chicken breasts through the middle to make thinner cutlets. Mix the flour with the garlic powder, salt, and pepper, then dip the chicken cutlets in the seasoned flour so they're coated with the stuff.

Heat 1 tablespoon each of oil and butter in a pan over medium-high heat and cook the chicken on both sides, until it's golden in color and no longer pink inside. Once the chicken is done, take it out of the pan.

Put the remaining butter and oil into the pan (no need to clean it out), then sauté the mushrooms for 5-10 minutes, until they're soft. Add the garlic and cook until it's fragrant, something Bryant expects may take up to 2 minutes. Pour the marsala and chicken stock into the pan and simmer for 10 minutes, then add the cream and cook for another minute or so, until it's warm.

Return the chicken to the pan and simmer it in the sauce for 3-4 minutes, during which time the sauce ought to thicken up a bit. If you like, you can sprinkle the dish with some chopped parsley to pretty it up a bit before serving.

You might consider serving your chicken marsala with a side of pasta, although Bryant tells us she prefers it with rice and vegetables, and sometimes eats it with potatoes. As she says, "It's quite a rich and flavorful dish so it doesn't need to be paired with anything too intensely flavored."