Gluten Free Chicken Parmesan

the best recipe

Why you’ll love this recipe

• It’s pretty quick and easy, since I use a rich jarred gluten free marinara sauce (I like Rao’s best, and I buy a bunch when it’s on sale). You can also use pre-grated Parmesan and pre-shredded mozzarella cheese. You can even use thin-sliced chicken breasts.
• It has tons of flavor from dried Italian seasoning, which you can buy at the store or make your own with a few classic dried herbs. We also add rich grated Parmesan to both the breadcrumb mixture and on top before baking.
• The fried and breaded cutlets are so tender and juicy that you can make them up to 3 days ahead of time and then reheat them with the sauce and cheese for the quickest weeknight dinner you can imagine.

what’s in it/substitutions

Ingredient notes & substitutions

Breadcrumbs

I like gluten free panko breadcrumbs in this recipe, but regular, finely ground breadcrumbs would be great, too. If using regular, you’d probably need about 1 cup of breadcrumbs and a bit less olive oil for frying. If you’re using pre-seasoned breadcrumbs, omit the added Italian seasoning, salt and pepper.

There are also quite a lot of brands of packaged gluten free bread crumbs you can buy. I don’t really care for Aleia’s gluten free breadcrumbs, since they tend to be very pale, and very hard (almost stale) quite often. I have tried and liked many gluten free brands, though, including:

• Ian’s brand Panko-style breadcrumbs
• Nature’s Promise (the Stop & Shop grocery store house brand) gluten free is well-priced, nicely browned, and crispy
• Jeff Nathan Creations Chef Gourmet gluten free panko flakes (in the blue jar)
• Kikkoman gluten free panko style coating
• 4C gluten free Panko plain

Egg free

If you can’t have eggs, try thinning some buttermilk with a few drops of water. Milk is too thin, and it will slip right off of the chicken. You can also whisk together 2 tablespoons of superfine rice flour or tapioca starch with 4 tablespoons of lukewarm water into a slurry. Treat these mixtures just like the beaten eggs.

Dairy free

If you need to eliminate dairy from this recipe, you need a replacement for both types of cheese. Fortunately, there are so many good dairy free cheese varieties on the market today. For dairy free Parmesan, I love the Follow Your Heart brand of dairy free grated d. It comes in a shaker canister and tastes exactly like the “real” thing. Violife also makes a really good vegan Parmesan.

For dairy free mozzarella, Daiya is good (and has gotten so much better recently), and so is Miyoko’s Creamery. They both melt quite well.

make ahead/leftovers

Storage & Reheating Instructions

This recipe calls for breading and frying the chicken cutlets in a pan, then topping them with sauce and cheese and baking to finish cooking the chicken and melt the cheese.

Make ahead

The breaded and fried chicken cutlets, which may or may not be fully cooked but are browned and golden, can be made up to 3 days ahead of time, allowed to cool, and then stored in a sealed glass container in the refrigerator. Before serving, allow them to come to room temperature, sprinkle lightly with lukewarm water, then top with sauce and cheese and bake until done.

Leftovers

If you have fully prepared, fried, topped and baked chicken Parmesan, it will also keep quite well in a tightly sealed container in the refrigerator for about 5 days. Allow it to come to room temperature, and sprinkle lightly with lukewarm water, and reheat in a 300°F oven until warmed throughout.

Freezing

For longer storage, you can freeze the cutlets after being fried and baked or just fried for up to 3 months. If you plan to freeze them after frying alone, make sure they read at least 165°F on an instant read thermometer.

Seal tightly in freezer-safe wrap and/or a container. Defrost overnight in the refrigerator, let come to room temperature, sprinkle lightly with lukewarm water, add tomato sauce and cheese if you haven’t already, and reheat in a 300°F oven until warmed throughout.

My Pro Tip

Expert Tips

Keep your breading station tidy

The thing that keeps me from baking and frying breaded chicken and fish for dinner is often the mess it tends to make. But you can keep things tidy in a few ways:

• Use a separate wide, shallow bowl, if possible, for the flour, egg mixture, and breadcrumbs (and remember it’s dry-wet-dry, ending with the crumbs). If you try to stuff a big piece of chicken in a tiny bowl, you’ll make a mess.
• Assign each bowl its own fork or tongs utensil. Use the fork for the flour to flour the chicken, and lift it into the egg bowl. Then, use the egg fork to dip the chicken in egg and transfer. Then, the breadcrumb tongs to coat and transfer.
• You can even combine the flour and eggs into one mixture and only dip the chicken cutlets twice, like we do with our gluten free chicken tenders.

Don’t make the breading soggy

Chicken Parmesan can turn soggy quite easily, but this recipe makes chicken that stays crispy outside, tender and juicy inside, and full of flavor. If you’re going to go to the trouble of breading and frying chicken, you want to be careful with how much tomato sauce you use to bake it. Otherwise, all that deliciously crisp coating is wasted.

To keep the breading on the cutlets crispy, pat the raw chicken dry before dipping it in the flour mixture. Dredge the chicken once in flour once, let it rest briefly, then dredge it again. Use Panko-style breadcrumbs for a thick crust.

Instead of covering the chicken in tomato sauce, you can also place the sauce in a baking dish first, then the fried chicken cutlets on top of the sauce, add the cheese and bake it. That’s one way to leave the top nice and crisp. To preserve that crunchy breading, you could also just place the fried chicken on a baking sheet, top with cheese, and bake until melted. Then serve the tomato sauce on the side.