Vegetable soup with ground beefMarsala with garden chicken and olives
Posted October 31, 2023 by: Admin
Ready to make Olive Garden’s chicken marsala at home? Olive Garden has a long list of deliciously enticing dishes, and their chicken marsala is at the top of my list.
The marsala sauce is incredibly flavorful, with lots of rich spices, mushrooms, and Marsala wine. It’s sweet, earthy, savory, and worth the time it takes to prepare this wonderful main dish.
If you’re craving Olive Garden but don’t want to face the crowd, check out this chicken marsala recipe below.
Olive Garden Chicken Marsala
What makes Olive Garden’s chicken marsala so deliciously addictive? First, it’s the Marsala wine sauce. It’s rich, flavorful, and adds a lovely sweetness that pairs perfectly with mushrooms and pasta. While most of the ingredients are pantry staples, you may need to make a special trip to the grocery store for this.
There’s simply no substitute! Marsala wine hangs out with vinegar in the cooking section, not the wine selection. With fragrant Marsala, earthy mushrooms, and juicy, crispy chicken breasts, this will certainly become your family’s next favorite meal. The best part? It’s surprisingly easy to prepare on a busy weeknight.
Ingredients
– Chicken: Two boneless, skinless chicken breasts pounded thinly are all you need for this hearty dish.
– Flour, garlic, salt, and pepper: Adding flour to your broth helps thicken it, and the spices add even more flavor.
– Vegetable oil: A drizzle of vegetable oil in the pan helps sauté your proteins to perfection.
– Butter: Adding butter makes the sauce rich, creamy, and glossy. Make sure to go for unsalted butter, or your dish will be too salty.
– Mushrooms: Mushrooms add hearty and earthy flavors that make this dish so satisfying. Any mushrooms work in this dish, such as white, cremini, or porcini.
– Marsala wine: This fortified wine adds robust and slightly sweet flavor to the dish. When picking it up at the grocery store, you’ll find it in the vinegar section, not the wine section.
– Chicken stock: Chicken broth helps create a rich and decadent sauce. For a different flavor profile, you can also use vegetable broth.
– Brown sugar: There are plenty of heavy and earthy flavors in this dish. Brown sugar helps keep the sauce light and slightly sweet.
– Worcestershire sauce: Adding a hint of Worcestershire pairs so well with earthy mushrooms. It’s tangy, sweet, and adds an intense flavor.
– Dijon mustard: Dijon mustard is slightly spicy and bitter and takes the earthy flavors of this dish to new heights.
How to Make Olive Garden Chicken Marsala
1. Pound the chicken breasts to about 1/2 inch thick. Thinly pounded chicken breasts ensure a crispy crust and more surface area to soak up that magical marsala sauce.
2. Coat your chicken. Coat the chicken breasts with a layer of flour and spices to get a beautiful crispy crust that locks in moisture.
3. Sear the breaded chicken breasts. In a thick-bottomed pan, cook the chicken breasts until they are golden, crispy, and delicious. Set them aside and cover them.
4. Cook the mushrooms. In the same pan used for the chicken, sauté the mushrooms until they are tender.
5. Prepare the marsala wine sauce. Pour the wine and chicken stock into the pan and simmer until the wine reduces. Add brown sugar, Worcestershire, Dijon mustard, and butter to the pan and cook until the butter is nice and creamy.
6. Combine the chicken and the sauce. Place the cooked chicken back in the pan and coat it with the marsala sauce. Keep the chicken warm on the stovetop in the sauce until ready to serve.
7. Garnish just before serving. For that authentic Olive Garden experience, top it with fresh parsley and feel free to sprinkle some grated parmesan.
Tips and Tricks
– Weigh your chicken. Nobody wants raw or overcooked chicken. Weigh your chicken breasts on a kitchen scale so they cook evenly in the pan.
– Let your chicken be. Ensuring a crispy crust is the key to incredibly moist chicken. Avoid the urge to flip your chicken every few minutes. Let it cook in the pan and only flip it when necessary.
– Don’t leave any crispy bits behind. After cooking your chicken and mushrooms, there will be crispy bits at the bottom of the pan. Scrape those bits and infuse them into the sauce. Those crispy bits are packed with flavors and are the secret to a rich and tasty main course.
– Give the sauce time to thicken. Waiting for your sauce to thicken is a test of patience. Cook it gently and slowly to bring out those flavors, and resist the urge to crank up the heat to speed up the thickening process. It will thicken. You have to be patient!
– Taste as you go. It’s easy to go overboard with salt. Many chicken or vegetable broths contain a lot of sodium, so make sure to taste your sauce at each stage to ensure it’s not too salty.
Storage
There are two ways to store your chicken after cooking.
You can refrigerate it or freeze it. If you want to reheat leftovers for lunch the next day, place the chicken in an airtight container. It will keep in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.
If you want to prepare a batch for another day, you can freeze it. Place it in a freezer bag and remove as much air as possible. It will stay fresh in the freezer for up to 3 months.
When you’re ready to prepare it, let it thaw in the refrigerator overnight and then heat it in an oven set to 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes.
