Tonight's dinner!
Chicken Marsala is one of my favorite meals. Don makes a great one. Each time I had a baby, the night before we went to the hospital (or in Alex’s case the night before the first of four times we thought we were going to the hospital) he asked me what I’d like for my “last meal” and it was Chicken Marsala every time.
Chicken Marsala is also one of those cheap meals that we keep in our rotation of meals. We don’t make it every pay period by any means, but maybe once every month or two. Did I mention it’s one of my favorite meals?
Here’s what we spent on tonight’s meal at PriceRite and Aldi’s:
Mushrooms: $1.99
Whole wheat spaghetti at Aldi’s: $1.09
Bag of frozen chicken tenders at Aldi’s: $5.99 but we only used six of the tenders, not the whole bag, which is usually about 18 tenders, so we used about $1.99 worth of tenders.
TOTAL: $5.00 plus we had a salad so add another dollar or so.
For our Marsala wine, we use Holland House Cooking Wine that I keep on hand all the time (I keep both Marsala and Sherry cooking wines on hand.) We used about 1/4 cup tonight.
Here’s the thing about Don though: he’d make a great video blogger chef or a great webinar blogger chef because he cooks without a recipe. He’s a fantastic cook but it’s almost always out of his head.
So tonight, we did our best to get his recipe out of his head and onto a piece of paper (rather, onto a paper napkin) so that I could pass it along.
Here it is:
Step one: cook the chicken.
Take 6 chicken tenders (or however many you think you need) thawed and cubed, and cook them. You can bake them, fry them or saute them. He fried them tonight, which in my opinion is the best, but not the healthiest way (shocker.) Tonight before frying them, he rolled them in flour first and added a little salt and pepper too.
Technically they don’t even need to be cooked all the way through because they’re going to go back into the pan in a little while.
Take them out and set them aside. He puts them in a dish that has paper toweling on it, to catch the grease.
In the same frying pan, saute the mushrooms in either butter or olive oil. We buy fresh, whole mushrooms and either slice them as we did tonight, or cube them, depending on what we’re cooking.
Put the chicken back in and saute together.
Next, de-glaze the pan by adding in the 1/4 cup of Marsala and 1 cup of chicken stock.
While the pasta is cooking, add the Marsala Wine and the Chicken Stock.
You can be cooking your pasta at the same time.
Cook chicken, mushrooms, marsala and chicken stock together until it boils.
Cook the chicken, mushrooms, Marsala and chicken stock together for a minute or so until it comes to a boil.
Season with salt, pepper, garlic and basil.
At this point Don likes to thicken up the sauce to just how he likes it. In his words, “I take pats of butter and roll them in flour and add in enough pats of butter and flour until it’s the way I like it.”
He said you can also make a rue of butter and flour if you would like, or you can just add the flour to thicken.
Once the pasta is done, we toss it all into a serving bowl with the chicken and Marsala on top. He sprinkles parsley on top for looks.
We used to always make a bed of rice for under the chicken, and sometimes we still do, but when we lived in New Jersey, one of our favorite Italian restaurants served it over pasta, and ever since then, that’s an option for us as well. That’s the way the kids like it best. Using the wheat pasta makes it a bit healthier too.
Enjoy!
The Whole bag of Chips 
Thanks for the recipe Jen! Tried a crock pot chicken marsala recipe last night, just ok. Can’t wait to try yours! I love chicken marsala!
Jenn, how do you make it in the crock pot?? I’d love to know…
Yum! One of my favorite meals, up there with chicken pot pie!! (and now, your shepard’s pie!)
some questions…did he roll the chicken in flour before sauteing, and did he add any spices to it?
how do you get your kids (and husband!) to eat whole wheat pasta??? (mine wouldn’t even eat the Barrilla in the yellow box, which is pretty yummy!)
how is just 6 chix tenders enough for your whole family of 5?? No wonder you are so skinny! We would probably eat 4-5 chix tenders each! (but maybe not if they are with the other stuff…)..definitely more than one chix tender per person, though…
They happen to really like this particular whole wheat pasta which is from Aldi’s. It’s the Fit and Active brand that they sell there. We’ve had others that they have not liked at all, even I didn’t like at all. I think they’ve also gotten used to it because we’ve had it a bunch of times now.
Six tenders is enough for the five of us because Alex doesn’t like meat hardly ever. So she just eats the pasta mostly. But the good thing about the bag is the tenders are individually frozen so you just pull out and thaw what you need. With the pasta and the mushrooms I tend to not eat a lot of chicken, but you can bulk it up.I will also say that looking at the leftovers, there’s more pasta than chicken left, so if you wanted to eat it leftover you could add more chicken to make sure the leftovers have enough.
Don says yes he rolled the chicken in flour first and yes he used salt and pepper when he sauteed it. I’ll add that in. Thanks for asking!
I had Chicken Marsala at a friends wedding and didn’t care for it…I don’t think I like the wine, but this looks amazing! I think I might just make it with all chicken broth!! 🙂 nom nom nom…
This looks really good and I have everythingi need to make it, may try tonight. Thanks!