Giada De Laurentiis' Sauce Recipe Will Upgrade Your Salmon
Giada De Laurentiis — chef, TikTok sensation, and Food Network's resident wily minx — is at it again. She's taking a tried and true recipe and making it even better. Not dissimilar to that time on TikTok when De Laurentiis took leftover pasta and made it better by turning it into pizza, defying physics, geometry, and Italian cooks everywhere. A recent Instagram post from De Laurentiis' lifestyle brand, Giadzy made it clear that the chef's back to her not-so-old tricks again.
This time, De Laurentiis is upgrading a dish that she claims is already one of her most popular: chicken piccata. Why mess with success? Well, when you've already turned pasta into pizza, there's only one thing you can do for an encore: turn chicken into fish. De Laurentiis totally gets why chicken piccata is a classic, by the way. Simple ingredients, effortless construction — chicken piccata is a strong arrow in any home cook's quiver. The briny capers and tangy lemon sauce turn a basic chicken breast into an easy, delicious meal that can be fast or fancy (or even both). But, as De Laurentiis confesses on her website, "I might like this salmon dish even better — the rich salmon pairs so well with the bright lemon and caper sauce." And if the queen of the Italian kitchen says that a piccata sauce will take your salmon to the next level ...well, who are we to question her majesty?
For her next trick, De Laurentiis puts a business economy salmon in first class
De Laurentiis' "salmon with lemon caper sauce" (aka salmon piccata) can be made in under half an hour, her website claims, and will pair well with nearly any starch you have on hand, be it pasta, polenta, or potatoes. And while you might not have an updated inventory of clam juice (don't worry: De Laurentiis says that chicken stock is fine, too), you probably have all the other ingredients for this sauce in your kitchen already. After cooking the salmon, all you need is broth (or clam juice), shallots, lemon juice, and capers to start your sauce, adding lemon zest, butter, and mustard toward the end to make it sing. "Welcome to your new favorite weeknight dinner," Giadzy's Instagram post proclaims.
It should be said that, at least as far as Bon Appétit is concerned, no capers is no excuse for a sub-par salmon. "Now is the time to buy a big jar," the magazine writes to the caper-less cook. "Your kitchen will never be the same." And while the BA recipe is largely similar to the one from De Laurentiis, there is one glaring exception: Bon Appétit is still over here making its piccata with chicken like it's early 2022. We're nearly in Q2, guys, and if you want your piccata to have that De Laurentiis sparkle, it's gotta be salmon.