Chicken Francese is a family favorite Italian-American meal. With its crispy coating and creamy lemon butter sauce, you will be going back for seconds and thirds! This to-die-for meal is ready in just 45 minutes!
There are few meals out there that we find ourselves quite literally licking the plate clean. Bad table manners? Definitely. But we’re not even sorry about it. It is that good. It’s all in that creamy lemon and butter sauce. It simmers and reduces and concentrates all of that goodness into one of the best sauces we’ve ever had. The best part about this is that all of that deliciousness is ready in just 45 minutes! Move over chicken piccata, there’s a new favorite Italian-American dish in the house!
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Chicken Cut Options for Chicken Francese:
You have a few options when it comes to what chicken you use. If you want to use chicken breasts, you want to be sure they are thin. There are a few options on how to do this:
- Cut each chicken breast in half horizontally, giving you 2 thin chicken breast pieces.
- Use chicken cutlets.
- Pound the chicken breasts thin.
Alternatively, you can always use boneless skinless chicken thighs if you prefer dark meat. Boneless skinless chicken thighs are typically thin enough that you shouldn’t need to pound thin.
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Doubling Recipe Instructions:
If doubling the recipe, be sure to add in extra butter and olive oil in between batches. You can add all of the cooked chicken pieces to a 9×13 pan and pour the sauce over the chicken and warm in the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 minutes for the final steps.
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Sauce Thickness:
This sauce is fairly thin. If you want a thicker sauce, sprinkle in 1-2 teaspoons of flour into the sauce and stir it in.
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White Wine:
Some home chefs love white wine in their Chicken Francese. If you are going to add in white wine, we highly recommend you use a good quality white wine. Cooking wine does not have the same flavor as standard drinking wine, and unfortunately just has a ton of salt. We do not recommend it. In a white wine butter sauce, you want to use quality ingredients.
Add 1/2 cup white wine when you add in the chicken broth. You will also need to reduce the amount of chicken broth down to 1 1/2 cups to account for the extra liquid.
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Serving Suggestions:
We believe nothing goes better with chicken francese than a large bed of mashed potatoes or pasta to soak up any remaining sauce.
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Fresh vs. Bottled Lemon Juice
When lemon is the star of the show in a sauce like francese, you really need to use freshly squeezed lemon juice.
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Storage and Reheating Instructions:
Chicken francese is best served immediately. However, you can store any leftovers in an airtight container for up to 5 days. Reheat in a skillet over medium-low heat until warmed through.
If you like this recipe, you may be interested in these other delicious chicken dinner recipes:
- Easy Chicken Teriyaki
- Classic Chicken Cordon Bleu
- Baked Honey Dijon Chicken and Potatoes
- Creamy Cajun Chicken Pasta
It was delicious, I don’t know about easy though, LOL, it did take me more than 45 minutes, but love it just the same
This recipe is definitely a 5-star!! Sooo delicious. My family loved it, especially my husband. Wow!! High praise indeed. I followed the recipe as written. Next time I plan on making the sauce thicker. I will also finish the chicken in the oven without the sauce so that my chicken coating won’t be soggy. All my errors as a new cook.
Delicious. A few modifications needed.
Excellent recipe! I agree with others that it takes much longer than 45 mins. I would say about 2 hours. Next time I’m going to pound the chicken halves to make them thinner because the breasts I used were huge and thinner pieces would cut the frying time down. Can’t wait to make thisbagain!
Delicious and I served in on top of linguine which was perfect. But man, 45 minutes was an extreme underestimate on time. It took me 2 hours!
Oh goodness — we’ll see how this turns out. It’s in the oven right now. Everything that could go wrong sort of did. I’m still a novice cook and definitely learning a lot. Rachel’s recipes are perfect. It’s just me. Hopefully you’ll get a laugh at my boo-boos. Everything went great as far as the coating and frying the chicken. It was beautiful and golden brown. The sauce is where I went south. I had way too much liquid for some reason. And then when I added the flour to the sauce, well, lumps and clumps everywhere. I should have mixed the 2TBS of flour with some of the chicken broth and shaken it up. As I said, I’m still learning. So I poured the sauce through a strainer and all my beautifully browned garlic ended up in the strainer. Ugh. I will definitely make the recipe again and try to remedy my mis-steps. The other thing I did was brown some mushrooms in butter and added them on top before I put it in the oven. Wish me luck. I also wish there was a video of Rachel cooking this recipe. I find them so helpful.
Well, family LOVED it!! Even with all my mis-steps. Adult daughter said definitely make it a regular dish. And my husband said it was delicious!! High praise indeed. I’m thinking of also serving asparagus to finish off the meal.
Absolutely delicious 😋 I did cut the chicken stock down so I could use 1/2 cup of white wine. It did only take about a hour! Definitely a keeper recipe easy and delicious
What type of white wine do you suggest?
Honestly, any white wine is good in this recipe. Just make sure it is a wine good enough that you would drink it, and it will turn out great! Steer clear from cooking wine found in the grocery store. The flavor is off-putting and it is full of sodium.
Like ALL of your recipes this was delicious. Thank you so much for all the time and trouble to give us all these wonderful dishes.
This was super tasty! I would have liked a crispier chicken coating, but that’s just my preference. I made the recipe exactly as written (with the white wine) and all the flavors were delicious. The sauce is so bright and lemony and I was sad when the leftovers were gone!