Rach Bakes & Stuff. . .: Chicken Marsala

I love chicken Marsala, it is one of my favorite dishes to get when we go out, so I figured, why not make this at home. I have been trying to think of lots of new things to cook at home. I love to cook and bake, but admitably, a lot of times Chris and I eat a lot of frozen foods. Why? Because of our work schedules, it's quick and convenient, not the best choice, but better than fast food I suppose. It gets difficult sometimes, especially because we can plan for a dinner for tomorrow, but when tomorrow gets here, we are not always in the mood to eat whatever we originally planned on having. If we aren't in the mood for it, then there is no sense in making it, it won't taste as good as it potentially could if we were in the mood to eat it.

Do you get what i'm saying? Do y'all have moments like that?

Well anyway back to the chicken Marsala. I started off with chopping my mushrooms and onions, I used baby bellas and a yellow onion. Once those were chopped, I set them to the side.

I also chopped my parsley and set that to the side, I used about 1/4 cup of fresh parsley.

Next, I filled a good size pan with 2-3 tablespoons of butter, and equal parts olive oil. I like doing this to get the taste of butter, but butter has such a high burn quality, so that is why I like to mix it with the olive oil.

While that heats up, I like to prep my chicken. For the chicken I put together Italian seasoned panko bread crumbs, seasoned it with a little extra salt, pepper, thyme, and garlic powder, I also added a bit of grated Parmesan. Cheese makes everything better.

I used two chicken breasts, but since they were so large, I split them in half, as well as pounded them out a bit, not too much though, and then dipped them in the breading.

After dipping all the chicken, your oil/butter should be hot, saute the chicken breasts until you develop a nice golden brown color on both sides, make sure to do this on medium high heat, not fully high, because you don't want this to burn. At this point you can preheat the oven to 350 and get a pan ready, sprayed with non stick spray to finish off the breasts in the oven, after they have developed that golden brown color.

After popping the chicken into the oven, in the same pan you saute'd the chicken in, saute the onions and mushrooms until translucent, and near the end add in fresh minced garlic, I like a lot of garlic, so I added in 3 whole tablespoons, you can certainly cut back if you are not a garlic fanatic, like myself.

Once everything is looking nice, you can add in your Marsala wine, I added 1 and 1/2 cups of Marsala wine, and then allowed it to come to a boil, and reduced it to a simmer. I allowed the wine mixture to simmer for thirty minutes.

After it simmered for 30 minutes I gave it a tastes, and adjusted the seasoning of salt and pepper to taste, the amount will vary on your personal preference. I added 1 cup of milk to my Marsala, it would be better with heavy cream, but I was attempting to make a bit of a healthier Marsala, ok, and I also didn't have cream on hand. After adding the cream, I also added my parsley and allowed it to simmer another 10 minutes.

Then I just pulled my chicken out of the oven and began to plate up. I served mine with instant cheesey scalloped potatoes, but risotto or pasta would be lovely with this. Also When I stored it, I kept the chicken and sauce separate so the bread crumbs, or crust, didn't get soggy.