Chicken Marsala
This post may contain affiliate links. Read my full disclosure policy.
Chicken Marsala is an Italian-American dish of golden pan-fried chicken cutlets and mushrooms in a rich Marsala wine sauce.
Chicken Marsala is an Italian-American dish of golden pan-fried chicken cutlets and mushrooms in a rich Marsala wine sauce. It’s the most popular chicken recipe on this website, and though it’s a classic restaurant dish, it’s really easy to make at home. With just one pan, you can have it on the dinner table in 45 minutes. The recipe makes a lovely sauce that is delicious over pasta, polenta, rice, or Parmesan smashed potatoes.
If your family loves Italian food like mine does, once you master chicken Marsala, try your hand at other Italian restaurant favorites, such as chicken cacciatore, pasta e fagioli, eggplant parmesan, penne alla vodka, and lasagna.
Table of Contents
What You’ll Need To Make Chicken Marsala
Marsala is a brandy-fortified wine from Sicily that is 100% worth adding to your pantry, if only to make this dish time and again. It will keep in a cool, dry spot for months.
I buy boneless skinless chicken breasts and pound them thin myself, as opposed to using the ultra-thin sliced cutlets sold at the supermarket, since pounding tenderizes the meat. This adds an extra step but you can save time by using pre-sliced mushrooms. (Or you can skip all this hassle by using chicken tenderloins, which are naturally tender.)
How To Make Chicken Marsala
If your chicken breasts are large, like the ones in the photo above, it’s best to first cut them in half horizontally. (If you pound them without first halving them, they’ll be ginormous and oddly shaped.)
Once you’ve got four flat filets, pound them each to an even 1/4-inch thickness.
Place the flour, 3/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper in a ziplock bag.
Add the chicken to the bag; seal the bag tightly and shake to coat chicken evenly. Set aside.
Heat the oil and 2 tablespoons of the butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. (Use a stainless steel pan for the best browning. Nonstick will work too, but you won’t get that nice golden color on the chicken.) Place the flour-dusted chicken in the pan, shaking off any excess first.
Cook, turning once, until the chicken is golden and just barely cooked through, about 5 to 6 minutes total. Transfer the chicken to a plate and set aside.
Melt the remaining tablespoon of butter in the pan. Add the mushrooms and cook, stirring frequently, until the mushrooms begin to brown, 3 to 4 minutes.
Add the shallots, garlic, and ¼ teaspoon of salt.
Cook for 1 to 2 minutes more.
Add the broth, wine, heavy cream, thyme, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/8 teaspoon of pepper; use a wooden spoon to scrape any brown bits from the pan into the liquid. Bring the liquid to a boil, then reduce the heat to medium.
Gently boil, uncovered, until the sauce is reduced by about half, slightly thickened, and darkened in color, 10 to 15 minutes (you’re going for a thin cream sauce; it won’t start to thicken until the very end of the cooking time).
Add the chicken back to the pan, along with any juices that accumulated on the plate. Reduce the heat to low and simmer until the chicken is warmed through and the sauce thickens a bit more, 2 to 3 minutes.
Sprinkle with parsley, if using, and serve.
Video Tutorial
You May Also Like
Chicken Marsala
Chicken Marsala is an Italian-American dish of golden pan-fried chicken cutlets and mushrooms in a rich Marsala wine sauce.
Ingredients
- 1½ pounds boneless skinless chicken breasts, pounded ¼-inch thick (see note), or chicken tenderloins
- 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- Salt
- Freshly ground black pepper
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
- 1 (8-oz) package pre-sliced bella or button mushrooms
- 3 tablespoons finely chopped shallots, from 1 medium shallot
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- ⅔ cup chicken broth
- ⅔ cup dry Marsala wine
- ⅔ cup heavy cream
- 2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme
- 2 tablespoons chopped fresh Italian parsley, for serving (optional)
Instructions
- Place the flour, ¾ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon pepper in a ziplock bag. Add the chicken to the bag; seal bag tightly and shake to coat chicken evenly. Set aside.
- Heat the oil and 2 tablespoons of the butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. (Use a stainless steel pan for the best browning. Nonstick will work too, but you won’t get that nice golden color on the chicken.) Place the flour-dusted chicken in the pan, shaking off any excess first, and cook, turning once, until the chicken is golden and just barely cooked through, about 5 to 6 minutes total. Transfer the chicken to a plate and set aside.
- Melt the remaining tablespoon of butter in the pan. Add the mushrooms and cook, stirring frequently, until the mushrooms begin to brown, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the shallots, garlic, and ¼ teaspoon of salt; cook for 1 to 2 minutes more. Add the broth, Marsala, heavy cream, thyme, ¼ teaspoon salt, and ⅛ teaspoon of pepper; use a wooden spoon to scrape any brown bits from the pan into the liquid. Bring the liquid to a boil, then reduce the heat to medium and gently boil, uncovered, until the sauce is reduced by about half, slightly thickened, and darkened in color, 10 to 15 minutes (you’re going for a thin cream sauce; it won’t start to thicken until the very end of the cooking time). Add the chicken back to the pan, along with any juices that accumulated on the plate. Reduce the heat to low and simmer until the chicken is warmed through and the sauce thickens a bit more, 2 to 3 minutes. Sprinkle with parsley, if using, and serve.
- Note: If your chicken breasts are large (like the ones in the photos that are about ¾ lb. each), it’s best to first cut them horizontally to form four flat fillets, then pound them to an even ¼-inch thickness. If you pound large chicken breasts without first halving them, they’ll be huge. Of course, you could also pound them thin first and then cut them in half vertically; the only drawback is that they’ll lose their natural shape (which, admittedly, is not a big deal!).
Pair with
Nutrition Information
Powered by 
- Calories: 537
- Fat: 32 g
- Saturated fat: 16 g
- Carbohydrates: 12 g
- Sugar: 4 g
- Fiber: 1 g
- Protein: 43 g
- Sodium: 877 mg
- Cholesterol: 203 mg
This website is written and produced for informational purposes only. I am not a certified nutritionist and the nutritional data on this site has not been evaluated or approved by a nutritionist or the Food and Drug Administration. Nutritional information is offered as a courtesy and should not be construed as a guarantee. The data is calculated through an online nutritional calculator, Edamam.com. Although I do my best to provide accurate nutritional information, these figures should be considered estimates only. Varying factors such as product types or brands purchased, natural fluctuations in fresh produce, and the way ingredients are processed change the effective nutritional information in any given recipe. Furthermore, different online calculators provide different results depending on their own nutrition fact sources and algorithms. To obtain the most accurate nutritional information in a given recipe, you should calculate the nutritional information with the actual ingredients used in your recipe, using your preferred nutrition calculator.
See more recipes:
Comments
Add a Comment
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Another delicious recipe everybody loved!! I invited friends over for dinner and made extra so my husband could try it the next day (he was working at the firehouse) and there wasn’t any left at the end of the night! Love that you suggest buying precut mushrooms, I also bought my chicken already trimmed and pounded thin so this was really about throwing everything together. I like that the sauce is thicker than most Marsala sauces, my moms never was thick. Yum yum new favorite!!
This recipe has become a favorite in our house. I’ve made it with both pasta and mashed potatoes as sides. Like them both equally. We like a lot of extra sauce in our family so I double the wet ingredients and end up with the perfect amount of sauce. I have shared this recipe/web site with several friends and family and they were just as pleased!
I made this for my son’s birthday dinner. I made it exactly as the recipe was written. I have tried other recipes and I have never been satisfied. This recipe is a winner! He told me it was the best marsala he had ever eaten. The directions were very easy to follow and I liked pictures of how to prepare the chicken for cooking. I will keep this recipe bookmarked for future events! Love the many recipes on this site.
One day I had a hankering for Chicken Marsala. It may have been the day I came on this website and went recipe by recipe through Jenn’s Tested and Perfected section because… well, duh… I tend to find winners in there. I pulled this recipe and went out looking for Marsala wine. In my area it turned out to be a little harder than I expected but I ended up finding it at Publix. This Chicken Marsala recipe turned out to be so spot on that I was delighted I’d put in the extra effort to find marsala wine because I have remade this recipe often. I usually add extra mushrooms but only because I adore them. The amount called for in the recipe is correct. I concur with her method of splitting the chicken breasts and then putting them in a ziplock baggie and pounding to your desired thinness, there’s something I don’t like about the ones bought thin in the store and I’ve always followed that process, too. I do make more sauce because I like to sauce this dish generously, that’s personal preference. The one piece of advice I would give is to give the Marsala time to cook off. I’ve been in a hurry and hurried that step before and that’s not one of the steps I’d recommend hurrying through. This is one of my current favorite recipes in regular rotation in my house and I’d daresay in other homes, too, with 354 reviews before mine. Well done, Jenn.
Chicken Marsala is my favorite dish at a Italian restaurant, so I was curious to try Chef Jenn’s version. I am very impressed with this recipe, tastes just as good as any Italian restaurant. Very easy to make and oh, it tastes so great. I love it and it is now in my Paprika 3 (digital cookbook app), as a favorite.
My family loves this dish. It is better than restaurant quality. I have made it twice. I do leave out the mushrooms because my family dislikes them. The second time I substituted vegetable broth for the chicken broth and half & half for the cream, which resulted in a too-thin sauce that I had to thicken with Wondra flour. The recipe as written is the best. Thanks, Jenn, for your delicious, reliable recipes!
This is the best I have found hands down
Yummy! So good. Agree on doubling the sauce
Outstanding recipe! Cooked as instructed. Next time I may double the sauce just to spread around on everything else since it’s so delicious. This is the third recipe I tried thus far from this website and they all have been a big hit. So, I stopped playing around and purchased the cookbook. It was good to see the book available electronically via Kindle as I cook with my device in the kitchen. That’s a “Win- Win.” Thanks again!
This dish looks amazing.
Can I make it a day ahead?
Thank you!
MBH
Hi Martha, Unfortunately this dish is best made right before serving. Sorry!