Welcome our first December guest – Julia Turshen!
Julia Turshen is a best selling cookbook author, food writer, chef, and food equity advocate. She lectures on food and home cooking and has published four solo books on the subject and has contributed to many others in collaboration or as a writer. She hosts the podcast Keep Calm and Cook On and writes a monthly column in Food & Wine called The Interview. Her regularly hosted cooking classes, Sundays with Julia, are very popular, especially among our team.
Julia has written for the New York Times, Condé Nast Traveler, Vogue, and Bon Appétit. She serves on the Smithsonian National Museum of American History’s Kitchen Cabinet Advisory Board and is the founder of Equity At The Table (EATT), a digital directory of people of color, women, and non-binary individuals in food. She also regularly provides meals for Citizen Action New York. Julia lives in Hudson Valley with her spouse, Grace, and their pets.
Thank you to Julia for this beautiful recipe out of her new cookbook, Simply Julia! Check out her other cookbooks, Now & Again, Feed the Resistance, and Small Victories.
FROM JULIA:
This is such a classic Italian-American dish and I just love it. The egg coating becomes so beautifully golden brown and the perfect texture for the lemony sauce. I taught this recently in one of my Sunday afternoon cooking classes and it was A HIT. We had it with garlic bread and a chopped antipasto salad full of olives, roasted peppers, marinated artichokes, salami + provolone. A great meal!
Find the recipe card below to conveniently pin or print!

Julia Turshen’s Chicken Francese
- Prep Time: 30 minutes
- Cook Time: 45 minutes
- Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes
- Yield: Serves 4
Ingredients
- Four boneless, skinless chicken breasts
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons EACH garlic powder + kosher salt
- 3 large eggs
- 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
- 2 lemons, 1 thinly sliced and the other juiced
- 1/4 cup dry white wine
- 3/4 cup chicken broth (or boiling water + Better Than Bullion)
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
- 1 large handful Italian parsley, finely chopped
Instructions
- Place one of the chicken breasts in a large resealable plastic bag and use a meat pounder (or a rubber mallet or the bottom of a small-but-heavy pot) to pound the chicken so it’s about 1/4 inch thick. Repeat the process with the remaining chicken breasts.
- Place flour, garlic powder and salt in a a wide, shallow bowl and whisk well to combine.
- Place the eggs in another shallow bowl and whisk well to combine.
- Place the oil in a large, heavy nonstick skillet over medium-high heat.
- Dredge the chicken breasts in the seasoned flour and knock off any excess. Then dip the chicken breasts in the beaten egg and coat completely, letting the excess drip off. Add the egg-dipped chicken breasts to the hot oil and cook, flipping once, until chicken is golden brown and cooked through, about 2 – 3 minutes per side. Do this in batches as needed.
- Transfer the chicken to a large serving platter.
- Add the sliced lemon to the pan and cook, stirring, until a tiny bit softened and very fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add the lemon juice, white wine, and chicken broth and turn the heat to high. Boil, scraping the bottom of the skillet with a wooden spoon to loosen any stuck bits, until slightly thickened, about 2 minutes. Turn the heat to low and stir in the butter 1 cube at a time, waiting until each melts and incorporates before adding the next. Pour the sauce and sliced lemons over the chicken and sprinkle with chopped parsley. Serve immediately.
Thisamericanplate
It looks absolutely mouthwatering! The combination of lemony sauce and a golden brown egg coating makes it a classic Italian-American dish that I can’t wait to try. The fact that it was a hit during one of Julia’s Sunday afternoon cooking classes speaks volumes about how delicious it must be. Serving it with garlic bread and a chopped antipasto salad full of olives, roasted peppers, marinated artichokes, salami, and provolone sounds like a fantastic meal. I’m looking forward to trying this dish and sharing my experience with friends and family!
Sabrina
thank you for sharing this, my kind of chicken dish, love all of these flavors and ingredients
★★★★★
Mary B
Excited to try this recipe! Had great fun taking one of Julia’s cooking classes with my vegan MIL – starting with the cocktail recipe is brilliant.
Stella
This really looks delicious, can’t wait to try it. Oh and your cookbooks are fantastic too.
Sue
Everyone here really likes a good chicken franchise. However, I could use to improve my recipe for this chicken dish. This looks like a great recipe to try. Thank you for sharing it. Can’t wait to try it real soon.
★★★★★