lemon chicken (chicken piccata)

Written by Michelle Published on October 23, 2018 in low carb, Main Dish, Our Favorites!, Recipes

This dish has been enjoyed by our family for longer than most of our kids are “old” – like close to 30 years! Affectionately called “lemon chicken” by everyone, but it’s technical name is chicken piccata. Who knew? Haha, we just know we LOVE it. It was always the meal of choice for most special occasions around here. All hands on deck to help get the meal prepped and ready when everyone knew what the end result would be. This made it especially hard to give up once we needed to change our lifestyle.

The original recipe was coated with a mixture of crushed corn flakes and flour, ya that’s a hard thing to duplicate. A corn flake substitute?? We tried lots of different combos over the last couple years to find that perfect sub, but nothing gave us that mouth feel and taste that we were so used to. Warm fuzzy food memories are nothing to mess with! If using all the subs didn’t do the trick, we’d just learned to live without it. Which was OK, we have plenty of family favorites in our new lifestyle, but there was always this lingering “what if” scenario that would play out in my mind.

Enter in Pork Panko! I remember the first time I saw it this year at PaleoFX and my mind was instantaneously in the kitchen coming up with the remake of this dish. It only took a couple of tries and it was done! Another family favorite meal, a new cleaner version, that we can enjoy once again. This is one of those make overs that nearly brought tears to my eyes, it’s been so long since we’ve enjoyed it, that being able to have it again…soooo many memories of past family dinners came rushing back.

Food memories are hard wired into our taste buds I’ve decided. The same way you can hear a song and be taken back to high school or catch a whiff of a fragrance and you’re taken back to your grandparents home. That’s what this dish does for our family, so many memories of family dinners! There’s just nothing like them. I hope it becomes a favorite in your home as well.

lemon chicken (chicken piccata)

Servings: 3-4
Time: 30
Difficulty: easy
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chicken piccata with a paleo twist

Credit: backporchpaleo.com

Ingredients

– 2 large chicken breasts
– 3 oz Bacon’s Heir Pork Panko (sub potato flakes for Whole30)
– ¼ cup Otto’s Naturals Cassava Flour
– ½ tsp Remond Real Salt Garlic Salt
– ½ tsp dried lemon zest, optional
– 1 tsp dried chives or parsley, optional
– 2 eggs
– 1 tbls water
– ½ pound mushrooms (white button or crimini), sliced about ¼” thick
– 1 cup green onions, sliced thin, green and white part
– juice of 1 lemon
– additional lemon wedges to serve with chicken
– 2-3 tbls grass fed butter or ghee for sauteeing chicken

Directions

1. Set your oven to it’s “warm” setting, place a wire rack in a baking dish and put in the oven.
2. Prepare chicken by patting dry with a paper towel, slicing in half horizontally. Pound out between two pieces of plastic to ensure even thickness if necessary. Set aside while you prep coating.
3. In a glass pie plate or rimmed plate, combine pork panko, cassava flour, salt, lemon zest and chives if using. Fluff together with a fork and stir to combine, set aside.
4. In another glass pie plate, whisk eggs and water until combined, set aside.
5. Begin warming a large cast iron pan over medium low heat, while you coat the chicken.
6. Place one piece of chicken in the egg mixture, remove and let the excess drip back into the plate. Next, put chicken in panko/flour mixture and coat both sides. Pressing in if you need to so you have a nice coating.
7. Add butter/ghee to pan, let it melt and add two pieces of chicken. When first side is golden brown, carefully flip over and cook until the other side is also nice and golden. Low and slow works best here, allowing the chicken to get cooked all the way through. Remove to wire wrack in the oven and repeat with remaining pieces of chicken. Only cook a couple at a time, overcrowding the pan will not allow chicken to cook evenly.
8. Once chicken is all done, remove final piece to the oven to stay warm. Toss in the mushrooms and green onion with additional butter/ghee if necessary. Sautée until mushrooms have given off some liquid and onions are soft. Add the lemon juice and stir to coat.
9. When ready to serve, place chicken on a platter and top with mushrooms and onions. Serve family style with additional lemon wedges to squeeze over the chicken before eating.