Welcome to Red Sauce America, our coast-to-coast celebration of old-school Italian-American restaurants.
The chicken cutlet is the stem cell of the red sauce kitchen: The stuff of life itself, a base protein that can, depending on how you cook it and sauce it, morph into a seemingly boundless array of codified, canonical Italian-American dishes. Marsala. Milanese. Francese. But what does it all mean? What distinguishes chicken Parmigiana from piccata? With the help of the fine folks at Detroit’s iconic Amore da Roma, we break it down.
Milanese
The ur-cutlet, simplicity at its finest: a crisp slab of breaded and pan-fried chicken breast, no sauce in sight, maybe a wedge of lemon or tuft of dressed arugula riding sidesaddle. (For your own good, don’t call it schnitzel.)
Parmigiana
Milanese—but make it fashion. Crunchy cutlets gilded with a thin layer of marinara and a flurry of grated Parmesan (and, in the case of most Italian-American joints, a heavy sprinkle of mozzarella), then broiled to bubbly perfection. It doesn’t get much more iconic than this, folks. Get BA's Best Chicken Parmesan recipe here→
Piccata
Less crunchy, more saucy. No breadcrumbs this time: slices of chicken get dredged in seasoned flour, sautéed in butter, and smothered in an addictively tangy butter-lemon-caper pan sauce. Get our Chicken Piccata recipe here→
Francese
Also known as “Chicken French,” this sauce is similar to piccata (sans capers), but is distinct for its decidedly un-crisp texture—he cutlets are dipped in wet batter rather that dredged in bread crumbs, resulting in an eggy, almost puffy exterior. (The resulting soggy deliciousness is exactly the reason why chef Tyler Kord is wholly obsessed with it.)
Marsala
Lightly floured, sautéed, and served in a rich, silky pan sauce composed of butter, onions, caramelized mushrooms, and plenty of marsala, the sherry-esque fortified wine from coastal Sicily.
Saltimbocca
The name literally translates to “jumps in the mouth”…for whatever reason. Cutlets are pounded out, then layered with sage leaves and prosciutto slices and (sometimes, but not always) rolled into tidy little packages before being dredged in flour and sautéed. (Here’s a recipe we love from the team behind Cervo’s and Hart’s.)
Amiel Stanek is the editor of Basically.