This is a simple Tuesday night sauce that produces Sunday night food. Originally from Italy and served on veal, it is well suited for chicken and pork chops. The classic piccata is a pan sauce made by searing the meat in a skillet, and deglazing the brown bits that stick to the bottom of the pan with wine, but the recipe is a snap to make on the grill. And for all the traditionalist chefs out there, I know my sauce is a bit heavier and richer than the textbook version, but I think it is needed to stand up to the big bold flavors of the grill.
Piccata Sauce Recipe
Tried this recipe?Tell others what you thought of it and give it a star rating below.
Piccata is a classic Italian restaurant dish traditionally made with pricey veal. But many chefs have adapted it easily to chicken breasts or pork chops. This simple, yet full flavored, recipe for piccata sauce is perfect for taking virtually any grilled meat over the top at your next dinner party or backyard cookout.Make extra sauce and serve it over rice.
Course: , ,
Dinner
Lunch
Sauces and Condiments
Cuisine:
Italian
Makes:
Servings:
Takes:
Ingredients
- 1 pound grilled chicken, pork, veal, or fish
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 1 teaspoon all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
- ⅛ teaspoon Morton Coarse Kosher Salt
- ¾ cup medium-dry sherry wine (see note below)
- ¼ cup dry white wine
- 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice (about the juice of 1 small lemon)
- 2 tablespoons brined capers, drained
- 2 tablespoons chopped parsley as optional garnish
Notes:
About the sherry. My recipe calls for sherry, a "fortified" wine that has had brandy added. An amontillado sherry, or oloroso sherry will work fine. Madeira, another fortified wine is also good, and bual Madiera is actually my fave. Fino sherry, sercial Madeira, and verdelho Madeira are dry and will work with 1/4 teaspoon of sugar.
About the dry white wine. I always have a jug of cheap dry white like Mondavi Woodbridge Sauvignon Blanc or Yellow Tail Chardonnay around for guzzling and cooking. Occasionally I pick up old, oxidized whites in the closeout bin just for this kind of sauce. The aren't good drinking, but make fine cooking wines.
About the lemon juice. Be precise when measuring the lemon juice. A bit too much and it will make the veins in your neck pop out. Get a fresh lemon if you can.
About the salt. Remember, kosher salt is half the concentration of table salt so if you use table salt, use half as much. Click here to read more about salt and how it works.
Optional garnish. When you're done you can garnish with a sprinkle of fresh parsley and a thin slice of lemon.
Serve with. Make a little extra sauce and serve with a grain that will sop up the extra sauce and a simple veggie. Try brown rice, couscous, barley, or bulgur wheat with grilled asparagus or squash. A big dry white, like a California Chardonnay.
Metric conversion:
These recipes were created in US Customary measurements and the conversion to metric is being done by calculations. They should be accurate, but it is possible there could be an error. If you find one, please let us know in the comments at the bottom of the page
Method
- Prep. While the meat is grilling, you can make the sauce on a burner indoors or out. Assemble the salt, pepper, and flour in a bowl. In a measuring cup, combine the white wine, sherry, and lemon juice.
- Build the sauce. In a frying pan melt the butter on low, then whisk in the flour mixture, turn the heat to over medium, and cook, stirring often, until all the flour is dissolved and starts to turn tan. Wait til it turns color, about 5 minutes. Turn off the flame so you don't have a flareup when you add the wine. Now add the wine mix, stir, and crank it to high. Cook the sauce, whisking every 2 minutes or so until it is slightly thick, but not syrupy thick. If the sauce is too thick, add a splash of water.
- Add capers. When the meat is done, add it and the capers to the sauce. Don't add the capers too early or they will disintegrate.
- Serve. Spoon a pool of the sauce on each dinner plate, then lay the meat on top of the sauce. Garnish with fresh parsley. If there's extra sauce, put it on the rice, which is a natural piccata side dish.
High quality websites are expensive to run. If you help us, we’ll pay you back bigtime with an ad-free experience and a lot of freebies!
Millions come to AmazingRibs.com every month for high quality tested recipes, tips on technique, science, mythbusting, product reviews, and inspiration. But it is expensive to run a website with more than 2,000 pages and we don’t have a big corporate partner to subsidize us.
Our most important source of sustenance is people who join our Pitmaster Club. But please don’t think of it as a donation. Members get MANY great benefits. We block all third-party ads, we give members free ebooks, magazines, interviews, webinars, more recipes, a monthly sweepstakes with prizes worth up to $2,000, discounts on products, and best of all a community of like-minded cooks free of flame wars. Click below to see all the benefits, take a free 30 day trial, and help keep this site alive.
Post comments and questions below
1) Please try the search box at the top of every page before you ask for help.
2) Try to post your question to the appropriate page.
3) Tell us everything we need to know to help such as the type of cooker and thermometer. Dial thermometers are often off by as much as 50°F so if you are not using a good digital thermometer we probably can’t help you with time and temp questions. Please read this article about thermometers.
4) If you are a member of the Pitmaster Club, your comments login is probably different.
5) Posts with links in them may not appear immediately.
Moderators