Traditionally, Chicken Marsala is made with a thin chicken cutlet cooked in Marsala wine and mushrooms but we amped up our stuffed Chicken Marsala by stuffing it with cheesy caramelized onions and then add some sun dried tomatoes and spinach to the finishing touch.
This stuffed chicken marsala recipe was one the the first dishes I cooked for Terry. He didn't believe me that chicken breast could be moist and flavourful and I was about to prove him wrong. I always love a good challenge in the kitchen, don't you?
The great thing about this stuffed chicken marsala recipe is it's easy to make and super flavourful! Terry had never cooked a single thing in his life, unless you count boiling water and toast so I wanted to make sure that this would be something that could be easily replicated anytime.
The end result? A flavourful 'fancy looking' stuffed chicken marsala to enjoy that looks like you spent a lot of time in the kitchen but you really didn't!
INGREDIENTS
All ingredients for this stuffed chicken marsala recipe can be found at your local grocery store.
You can substitute the cheeses with your cheese of choice. However, to get the gooey cheesiness, you should put a bit of mozzarella in it.
You can keep this recipe traditional as well and omit the sun dried tomatoes and spinach. However, I found the sun dried tomatoes gave it a nice umami kick and the spinach? It gives it a nice colour and some extra silky texture to the sauce.
PUTTING IT TOGETHER
How To Butterfly A Chicken Breast
Butterflying is essentially, cutting something across (but not all the way through) and opening it up like a book to give you a bigger and thinner surface area to work with. Think of it as opening up a book, the 2 sides of the pages gives you a bigger surface area once it's opened up. In this case, the wings of a butterfly is why it's called butterflying.
First step, safety first. Put your hand on the chicken and make sure your hand is above the line where you will be cutting across sideways. Putting your hands this way prevents you from nicking or cutting off your fingers 🙂 Unless you're into that kinda thing.
Once you have your hand in the right place, look at the middle point on the side of the chicken. Place your knife there and slowly cut side ways while peeling back the chicken so you can see what you're doing. Do not cut all the way through, you want a small piece of meat still intact at the end. Cut about 80% across. As a guideline to keeping my cuts somewhat straight, I use my cutting board and keep my knife parallel to it.
When you are about 80% through, open it up! It's kinda looks like pages of a book or 'butterfly' wings. You see why we didn't cut all the way through? we wanted 1 solid piece. *High five!* You just butterflied a chicken! If you cut too high or too low and made holes, no biggy it happens! A few more times doing this and you'll get the hang of it.
Flattening the Chicken
There are two ways to flatten the chicken. You can:
- The Easy Way - Place the chicken between two pieces of saran wrap and go at it with a mallet, frying pan or rolling pin. I personally don't prefer this method because I find it takes a lot longer because the chicken slides around inside the saran wrap when I'm trying to hit it since it's has a dome shape thickness to it.
- The Quick Way - Butterfly the chicken first, then give it a few whacks with a mallet, frying pan or rolling pin. This is my preferred method as it's quick!
Put the chicken between 2 pieces of saran wrap and whack it! You can use a bowl, a mallet, or my personal fave - a frying pan. Get out your frustration! Careful not to go too nuts, you want to somewhat keep the flattening even and not too thin.
Tip #1: Don't skip the saran wrap step. When you are trying to flatten out chicken, the saran helps in 2 ways. It makes it easier to flatten because the meat has a more slippery surface to spread and it makes it easier to peel off to use. Bonus? Keeps chicken bits from flying everywhere as well. A good shield!
Stuffing Your Chicken Marsala With the Good Stuff!
Once the meat has been somewhat flattened, add your cheese and caramelized onions. (You will need to caramelize the onions ahead of time)
To keep the chicken stuffing from falling out during our flipping step in the frying pan we can use toothpicks to hold them it in place. Just don't forget to take them out, they aren't fun to eat. 🙂
Tip #2: Refrain from using minty toothpicks. 🙂 Don't ask me how I know this. haha
Then we will dredge the chicken in flour. We don't want to go overboard here, the key is putting flour on it and then tapping the excess flour off. Why? We are using the flour as an aid for browning the chicken. Too much flour and it will just burn and fall off the chicken.
Then we fry it up in the frying pan with oil, butter on medium high heat for 4 minutes a side. The goal here is to get some browning on the chicken. It'll look something like the image below. When you get to that point on both sides, take it off the pan and set it aside.
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Stuffed Chicken Marsala with Cheesy Caramelized Onions
Recipe Notes
- Don't forget to remove the toothpicks after it's done cooking!
- You can substitute any type of cheese in this recipe, but the mozzarella is what gives it the gooeyness, so add a bit in as well!
- Refrain from using minty toothpicks!
Ingredients
Stuffed Chicken
- 2 chicken breasts
- 1 onion (sliced)
- 4 slices swiss cheese
- 4 slices mozzarella cheese
- ½ cup flour
Marsala Sauce
- 4 cloves garlic (finely minced, or grated)
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 227 g mushrooms (sliced)
- 1 cup Marsala wine
- 1 cup chicken broth
- 6-8 sun dried tomatoes
- 2 cups fresh spinach
- salt and pepper to taste
Corn Starch Slurry (To Thicken the Sauce)
- 1 tablespoon corn starch
- 1 ½ tablespoons cold water
Instructions
Preparation
- Heat up the frying pan with a bit of oil on medium heat
- Slice the onions up and put it into the pan to caramelize when the frying pan has come up to temperature
- Caramelize onions until brown. (should take approximately 5-10 minutes)
- Grate or slice the cheese and put it aside
- Chop up the sun dried tomatoes and garlic into small pieces and set aside
- Slice the mushrooms and set aside
Butterflying & Stuffing the Chicken
- Butterfly and flatten the chicken. (Detailed instructions above in blog)
- Put the chicken between 2 pieces of saran wrap and flatten it with a frying pan, a flat kitchen mallet or the bottom of a flat surfaced bowl.
- Once the chicken has been flattened, remove the saran wrap and stuff the chicken with cheese and caramelized onions
- Fold the chicken over itself and pinch the open sides and secure it with toothpicks
- Lightly dust the chicken with flour
Putting it Together
- Heat up the frying pan on medium high heat and put a bit of oil and butter in it.
- When the frying pan is hot, add in the chicken to brown. Brown each side for approximately 4 minutes.
- Remove the chicken from the pan and set aside.
- Set the stove to medium heat, and add in some more butter and the sliced mushrooms
- Cook the mushrooms until the moisture has evaporated and it has browned up.
- Add in the Marsala wine and cook for one minute to evaporate the alcohol
- Add in the garlic and sun dried tomatoes and chicken broth
- In a small bowl, combine the cold water with the corn starch and mix well and add it to the pan (this is to thicken to sauce a bit.) Keep stirring the pan until the sauce has slightly thickened.
- When the sauce is simmering, add the chicken back in and simmer for approximately 5-10 minutes
- Add in the spinach and wilt it for 1 minute
- Serve hot and enjoy!
Nutrition
*Nutritional information is calculated using online tools and is an estimate*
Josie says
I tried to do this dish, it turned out amazingly well. Everyone on the table speak out delicious, yummy, ask to do this again the next time while we are eating.... . I love to hear these fantastic comments from my family. So, thank you Joyce for your easy-to-do recipe. Thumbs up!!!