Lemon Chicken Piccata without Capers Recipe (2024)

Parmesan coated Chicken Piccata Milanese served with a lemon sauce and without capers. This is a one-pan meal.

What is Chicken Piccata?

Chicken Piccata is an Italian dish, which originally was prepared with thin slices of veal meat. The chicken version is called Piccata di pollo in Italian.

Piccata refers to a thin cut of meat, flattened with the help of a meat mallet. Pollo means simply chicken.

In a piccata, the meat is coated with flour before it is cooked in butter in a pan.

Serving the chicken with a lemon caper sauce is a common occurrence in North Italy AND in Italian franchise restaurants, such as the Olive Garden, in the US.

If the cutlet is breaded or coated with Parmesan cheese, as in today's recipe, it is also called a Milanese (means from Milano).

Technically, today's chicken dinner meal is a chicken piccata Milanese served with a lemony sauce.

How to make it?

This chicken dish resembles my chicken marsala in the preparation.

I have broken down the preparation for your chicken piccata in 3 main steps.

That way, you can quickly decide if you want to make this super delicious from-scratch dinner tonight!

Step 1

Cut chicken breast into two flat cutlets and flatten meat.

Dredge meat through seasoned flour, then dip in egg and coat at last with grated Parmesan.

Step 2

Heat up pan with oil and butter and cook meat on all sides golden brown.

Step 3

Prepare sauce in a pan with white wine and lemon juice.

Place chicken piccata into the sauce, garnish with fresh parsley and lemon slices. Serve hot.

Variations

Originally, I used to make my chicken piccata by coating it with flour only.

In 2015, I came across the enhanced Parmesan coated piccatta milanese and I couldn't go back ever since!

However, you are free to just coat the chicken with flour and to skip the egg and Parmesan coating. It would save you time (but you would miss out on some amazing flavors!)

OR if you would rather not coat your chicken with Parmesan, you can coat it with bread crumbs. The same way you coat a chicken Schnitzel.

The lemon butter sauce is also a game changer! Trust me, you don't want to skip that sauce.

The sauce is anyway prepared in the same skillet, which was used to cook the chicken, and it's ready in 5 minutes!

My lemon sauce is prepared with butter, white wine and lemon juice. Just 3 ingredients!

In Italy, they like to add capers too. You can add capers to the sauce during the preparation. Capers add very intriguing flavors to your sauce!

I skipped the capers because I rarely have quality capers in my fridge. They are just so difficult to come by, and I don't like those from commercial brands. I rather skip adding capers then adding poor quality capers to this chicken piccata.

Serving Suggestions

Chicken Piccata is served with pasta noodles and tomato sauce in North Italy, Switzerland, and Austria.

You can skip the tomato sauce and serve this chicken piccata with spaghetti or other penne.

We like it with plain cooked rice or buttered parsley potatoes.

Mashed potatoes and french fries are a popular choice for children.

Feel free to serve up it up with sheet pan roasted vegetables of your choice. Roasted carrots, brussels sprouts, potatoes, and baked parsnips or turnips make a great choice.

I can also recommend sautéed mushrooms as a side dish with this meat piccata recipe.

Artichoke hearts are a secrete serving suggestion.

FAQs