Chicken parmigiana
This chicken parmigiana recipe is written for Aussie home kitchens — au-italian leaning, supermarket ingredients, and timings that match a real weeknight rather than a studio set. As written it serves 6. Budget about 20 min to prep and 40 min to cook or bake, roughly 1 hr 30 min (includes 30 min brine) all up, across 27 ingredients and 6 method steps. The character of the dish comes from chicken breasts, cooking salt and ½ tsp black pepper. Check quantities in grams where listed — volume is fine for many liquids, but baking and batter ratios behave better on scales. One practical flag before you start: Dry brine keeps the chicken juicy through fry-then-bake. The Notes section expands shopping, heat, texture, and leftovers so the page stays useful beyond a bare ingredient dump. Everything on this page is metric-first for Australia. If you are converting from cups on an old card, weigh flour, sugar, and butter whenever the ingredient line shows grams.
Ingredients
Method
- Sprinkle chicken with salt, pepper and herbs. Refrigerate 30 minutes.
- Sauce: cook garlic and onion in oil 3 minutes. Add chilli and herbs 15 seconds, then wine; reduce until almost gone. Add passata, stock, salt and pepper; simmer covered 10 minutes.
- Heat oven to 180°C. Crumb chicken: flour, then egg mixed with garlic and herbs, then panko mixed with parmesan, salt and pepper.
- Shallow-fry in 1.5–2 cm oil at about 180°C, 2 minutes first side and 1½ minutes second side, until golden. Drain on a rack.
- Spoon sauce over about 80% of each schnitzel (leave edges crisp). Add basil, pile on mozzarella and parmesan, drizzle oil.
- Bake 15 minutes until cheese melts with a few brown spots. Serve at once.
Tip: Dry brine keeps the chicken juicy through fry-then-bake. Leave the ends of the schnitzel uncovered so they stay crunchy. Do not bake longer than 15 minutes.
Notes
- Putting it together for Chicken parmigiana: work clean, taste as you go, and do not rush browning or reduction steps if they appear in the method. If you are cooking for mixed diets, plate sauces and toppings separately where practical. Keep this page bookmarked if it becomes a household regular — we update wording when cooks report a confusing step. Metric consistency across Scoops & Dishes means once you trust the cups and scales here, breakfast through dessert behaves the same way.
- From our tested tip, expanded: Dry brine keeps the chicken juicy through fry-then-bake. Leave the ends of the schnitzel uncovered so they stay crunchy. Do not bake longer than 15 minutes. Treat that as the non-negotiable. If something still feels off — too wet, too pale, too tight — adjust one variable at a time (heat, liquid, or bake time) rather than changing three things at once.
- Make-ahead and leftovers: feeds a small table as written; bump quantities if you are feeding a crew. Leftovers of Chicken parmigiana usually keep 2–3 days in a sealed fridge container; reheat until steaming hot in the centre. Label freezer bags with the dish name and date. Allergens sit in the ingredient list — always double-check if cooking for guests.
- Shopping and mise en place: read the full ingredient list once before you start. For Chicken parmigiana, chicken breasts and cooking salt are the items that decide whether the dish tastes flat or properly seasoned. Weigh where grams are given — volume cups are fine for liquids and some dry goods, but baking ratios are tighter if you use scales. Australian cups are 250 ml; a tablespoon is 20 ml and a teaspoon is 5 ml.