The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

Next up: the sauce and cheese. I opted to use my basic
marinara sauce for this dish; its richness and deep flavor
stand up nicely to the crunchy chicken. For cheese, a
grating of fresh mozzarella applied before baking is
traditional. Despite the nomenclature, Parmesan cheese
does not always make an appearance in this dish. But
that’s not gonna stop us. I like applying good-quality
Parmesan at three different stages. First, I incorporate
some into the breading. It takes on a sweet, nutty flavor
as it fries—much better than bread crumbs alone. Next, I
mix some in with the mozzarella before topping the
chicken with it before baking. Finally, I add a handful of
grated Parm to the chicken after it comes out of the oven.
The residual heat of the chicken softens the cheese
slightly, but you still get plenty of intense, salty hits as you
eat it.
While many restaurants opt to blanket the entire piece
of chicken in a thick layer of mozzarella, that ends up
softening the coating too much. Instead, I found that
laying the chicken cutlets out in a casserole dish, then
spooning on sauce in a line down the center and adding a
layer of cheese left the ends of the cutlets protruding so
that they maintained at least some of that crispness you
worked hard to create.
I’d put this version of chicken Parmesan up against
any Little Italy version in the country.