In Search of the Crispiest Chicken Parm(igiana)
Sorry, NYT Cooking
Chicken parm: golden, crunchy, indulgent, perfect. But how do you get that crisp cutlet under all the molten cheese and tomato sauce without it turning into a soggy pile? This week, we untangle history, taste, and technique from Italian roots to American glory, and reveal a simple twist that keeps your chicken crackling while still smothered in glorious, bubbling sauce.
A good chicken parm is a declaration of intent, a flag planted in the fried breadcrumb soil of America’s immigrant kitchens. It’s crisp, thin, assertively golden, cut with the swift crack of a fork; the tomato sauce is a jubilant splash, red, sweet, acid, alive. The mozzarella strings like telephone wires across a city block, the parmesan on top is salty confetti, and you eat it fast, joyfully, because it won’t wait. A bad one, by contrast, is a sulk. It’s a clammy mattress of pallid poultry, soft as a hotel pillow, buried under a duvet of sodden crumbs. The sauce is tepid, the cheese a blanket of melted anonymity. You finish it not because you want to, but because leaving it behind would feel like conceding defeat to something that never fought in the first place.
Last week, I saw this recipe in the New York Times and I didn’t get it. Why make beautiful, golden chicken cutlets, only to layer them between sauce and bake them for 45 minutes? It sounds so…soggy. Perhaps the confusion comes from the name, or perhaps some people just like soggy breaded chicken. Nothing wrong with that. I like some food which is ‘wrong’ too: soggy chipshop chips with too much vinegar, a bowl of plain custard, a baked potato with tuna mayo, baked beans and cheddar cheese (I’m just describing British food). Chicken parm is short for chicken parmigiana, but chicken parmigiana is not a parmigiana made with chicken. And that, I think, is the malapropism at the heart of the NYT Cooking chicken parm recipe. The collapse of two parallel genealogies of “parmigiana” into one pan of saucy confusion.
A History and A Theory
You’ve probably eaten parmigiana, which some people also shorten to ‘parm’. Parmigiana di malanzane is the Sicilian/Southern Italian dish of aubergines (but sometimes courgettes or other vegetables) which are sliced, fried, then layered up with tomato sauce and cheese and baked. It’s a bit like a lasagna made with aubergines instead of pasta. You might also have eaten chicken parm, the American-Italian red sauce joint classic, in which a breaded chicken cutlet is fried, topped with a healthy dollop of marinara sauce, mozzarella and parmesan and then finished under the grill. They are quite different dishes, but they have a shared history and an interwoven storyline.
Italian food is famous because it was exported via America. 100 years ago in Europe, nobody cared about pizza or pasta outside of Italy. Even in Italy, nobody cared about pizza outside of Naples, or pastas outside of their respective regions. 100 years ago there was no carbonara or tiramisu but 100 years ago you could buy a pizza in New York and not in Milan. How is that possible? Because 100 years ago, Italy was only 64 years old, a regional patchwork still very much in the throes of creating its newly unified identity. During that same time period, the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the mass migration of Southern Italians and Sicilians to the US forged a new identity, the American-Italian, resplendent with its own dialects, fashions (great suits, great hair) and cuisine.
American-Italian food has a nouveau riche excess that is symptomatic of a sudden change in fortunes; opulent, not from the elaborate preparation of exotic ingredients, but from its quantity and conviviality, a celebration of meat and cheese and plenty. In some ways, it’s the Southern Italian interpretation of the aspirational ‘rich’ cookery of Northern Italy, facilitated by blue collar jobs and American meat markets. Ultimately, America did what Europe never could: it took the food of peasants, made it plentiful, and sold it back as aspiration. Chicken parm is maybe the best example of this. Most sources (including the NYT) point to parmigiana di melanzane as the origin for chicken parm, with the vegetables swapped for meat. It makes sense because of the name, but I think that’s only half the story.
The meat, pounded thin, breaded and fried, is cotoletta, the Northern Italian dish typically made with veal, sharing an idea from over the alps with Central Europe’s schnitzel traditions. The most famous version is from Milan (hence ‘chicken Milanese’ etc) and there, cotoletta is served straight up. In Bologna, they go a step further and top it with parmesan, then finish it in the oven to melt the cheese. Sounds familiar? If you add a splash of tomato sauce + mozzarella (both Southern Italian ingredients) you have chicken parm. So that’s what I think this is, not a parmigiana di melanzane that swaps the aubergine for chicken, but Cotoletta Bolognese with the tomato sauce and mozzarella from a parmigiana on top. Plus a side of spaghetti for some pure southern love. Nowhere in Italy would serve these things together, but in the 21st region of the Eastern Seaboard, new traditions were made and this is the happy result. A Northern dish and a Southern dish, united by Neapolitans in New York.
The point of all of this is that I don’t think layering this dish up and baking it makes sense. But food doesn’t have to make sense. It doesn’t have to be justified by history, either. I just think it’s interesting to see where things have come from and where they can go to, and this is what led me down the path to this week’s recipe.
The Science of a Really Crispy Chicken Parm
So, we’ve got the classic chicken parm, sauce and cheese topped and grilled/broiled. Let’s call that base neutral. Then, we’ve got the layered version alla aubergine parmigiana. Let’s call that base soggy (and absolutely fine, if you’re into it). So what about on the other side of neutral, how do we go even more crunchy, even more crispy?The ultimate dilemma is that we need to cover a fried, crispy cutlet of chicken with a wet, saucy sauce without the breading going soft. I’ve seen one recipe which tackles this by going cheese then sauce - smart, but it feels wrong, somehow upside down, like putting cheese under the sauce on a pizza.
What I’ve got for you is a better way. We’re going to fry the cutlets as normal, make a marinara sauce as normal, but instead of topping the cutlets with the sauce and cheese and then putting them under the grill together (I have identified this moment as the soggy zone) we lay the mozzarella straight on top of the sauce in a pan, put the pan under the grill to brown the cheese, then pour the whole, hot molten delicious mess over the cutlets which have remained perfectly crispy. This is the move that separates the amateurs from the obsessives. It’s a tactical inversion of the classic problem. Instead of sacrificing crispness on the altar of gooeyness, our breading remains uncompromised.
I use 2 400g tins of chopped tomatoes to make the sauce for this. It’s slightly more than you need (we’ll use about 2/3rds), but one tin doesn’t quite make enough for both the pasta and cutlet topping. I would stick to this quantity and have a leftover portion of sauce to keep in the fridge for later. This is actually just great general practise. I make big 6-8 tin batches of sauce at a time and fridge/ freeze them. Having a cooked tomato sauce ready in the fridge (or freezer) is almost like having a mother sauce - you can use it to make so many dishes so quickly.
My other deviation from tradition is to use thighs instead of breast (this was something from the NYT recipe which I did like). Thighs have much more flavour and are much less easy to dry out. They’re also more economical. To me it’s a win win and I highly recommend you try it, but you can absolutely use chicken breast with the exact same method if you prefer.
I’m doing this the American-Italian way and serving the parm with a side of spaghetti dressed in the same marinara sauce. In Australia, they serve chicken parm with salad and chips, which I also think sounds great and could be a good option here.
The Recipe
2 Large Chicken Thighs (or breasts) skinless and boneless
2 Tins Chopped Tomatoes
2 Cloves Garlic, peeled
Pinch of Chilli (optional)
Pinch of Oregano
Fresh Basil
50g Parmesan, grated
35g Flour
75g Panko Breadcrumbs, mixed with 20g of the parmesan
1 Large Egg, whisked with a pinch of salt
1 Ball Mozzarella (100-125g), sliced 1cm thick
150g Spaghetti
Start by making the tomato sauce. Add 50ml of olive oil to a saucepan with the whole peeled garlic cloves. Fry for 1/2 mins until golden, then add the basil and chilli and sizzle for 30 seconds before pouring in the tomatoes, oregano and 1 tsp salt. Leave it at a lively simmer while you prep the chicken.
Lay the chicken thighs (if you use breasts, butterfly them first) onto a chopping board between two sheets of baking paper (or clingfilm) and use a rolling pin or bottle to gently but firmly pound and roll them until about 1cm thick. Salt generously on both sides.
Set up a breading station with the flour on one plate, the egg on another next to it, then the parmesan seasoned breadcrumbs next to that, with a clean plate at the end of the line. Dust the chicken in the flour, shake off any excess, then coat with the egg, and finally coat well on both sides with the parmesan breadcrumbs. Place onto the clean plate.
Now fill a saucepan with boiling salted water for the pasta, and set up a frying pan over a medium high heat with a good centimetre of olive oil in it for frying the chicken. Put your grill on full whack to preheat. Drop the pasta and set a timer for 8/9 minutes (however long you need for your pasta to be al dente).
When the oil shimmers (180c with a thermometer) carefully lay the chicken into the oil and cook for about 3 minutes on each side, until golden brown. Remove onto your serving dish and place this right on the bottom of your oven (which will be warm from the grill).
By now your pasta should be ready and the sauce should have cooked for 20 mins or so and thickened up nicely. Drain the pasta, return to the saucepan and toss with about a third of the tomato sauce until well coated. Leave it in the pot for now.
Place another third of the sauce (or as much as you want to generously top both cutlets) into a small frying pan. Lay the mozzarella on top and slide it under the grill, as close as you can to the element. After a few minutes, it should be golden and bubbling.
Here’s the fun bit. Remove the cutlets from the bottom of the oven, plate up a few twirls of the spaghetti around them, then pour that hot, bubbling sauce and cheese right over the top. Finish with the remaining parmesan, more basil, oregano and black pepper.
Thanks for reading! Enjoy the recipe and see you next week for the start of a new project I’ve been working on. Jordon x
Very good!!!