Easy Chicken Madeira Recipe with Secret Sauce (2024)

FAQs

What is the ingredient Madeira? ›

Approximately 85% of Madeira is produced with the red grape, Negra Mole. The four major white grape varieties used for Madeira production are (from sweetest to driest) Malvasia, Bual, Verdelho, and Sercial. These varieties also lend their names to Madeira labelling, as discussed below.

The sauce is typically made by reducing the Madeira wine over medium heat until it thickens and becomes syrupy. The beef or veal stock is added to the pan along with other ingredients, such as chopped shallots, minced garlic, or herbs.

What's the difference between chicken Madeira and Chicken Marsala? The difference lies in the broth and the wine used. In this chicken madeira recipe, you use beef broth and Madeira wine. The marsala version of the dish is usually made with chicken stock and with Marsala wine.

Juicy chicken is smothered in a rich mushroom sauce, which gets its depth of flavor from combining beef broth and sweet Madeira wine. Easy enough for a weeknight dinner, but elegant enough to serve for a dinner party!

The initial winemaking steps of Madeira are similar to other wines: grapes are harvested, crushed, pressed, and then fermented. The fermentation process is stopped by the addition of natural grape spirit in order to obtain an ethanol content of 18–19%.

Madeira Substitute

Like Madeira, Marsala comes in dry and sweet varieties — but the ones typically used for cooking tend toward dryness. Unless your recipe specifically calls for a sweet Madeira, opt for a dry substitute. Other acceptable alternatives are dark sherry, port, or red vermouth.

The Taste of Madeira: There are several tastes profiles, but most will have flavors of Caramel, Walnut Oil, Peach, Hazelnut, Orange Peel, and Burnt Sugar.

How can you substitute Madeira wine in cooking? For off-dry or sweet Madeira, sweet Marsala, sweet Sherry, or an inexpensive Tawny Port. For dry Madeira, dry Marsala will do, or cooking Sherry.

You can use all Madeira Wine brands for cooking. However, Madeira has dry and sweet varieties; the types usually used in cooking are dry. It is suitable for red and white meat but will produce a darker sauce. We also recommend a Reserve wine aged for at least five years or three years.

Add olive oil to heavy hot saucepan. Add onions, garlic, mushrooms, saute until mushrooms are tender. Add flour and cook about 1 minute then deglaze pan with Marsala wine. Add beef stock and cook until thick and flavors are blended.

Is it better to use dry or sweet Marsala for chicken Marsala? ›

Should you use sweet or dry Marsala in your Chicken Marsala recipe? It doesn't make a huge difference, and either option will produce delicious results, but I would go for dry because the sweet Marsala has a bit too much sugar for such a savory dish.

Possible substitutes would be a dry Madeira wine or a darker sherry such as Oloroso. If you don't have these then you could also use port or red vermouth.

Madeira sauce is made from Madeira wine, beef or chicken stock, shallots, and butter. It is often thickened with a roux or a cornstarch slurry to achieve a rich and velvety texture.

Chicken Bellagio | The Cheesecake Factory.

Espetada. This spectacular grilled beef dish, a traditional Madeira food specialty, there's a delight in every bite. It is traditionally cooked on skewers over hot coals and seasoned with garlic, salt and bay leaf. It is often paired with side dishes of vegetables, fried maize cubes or bread.

Madeira is a fortified wine available in a range of dry to sweet styles. It gets its name from the island of Madeira, a small, beautiful rock in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Madeira's unique taste comes from repeatedly heating the wine.

Madeira (named after the Portuguese island where it is made) uses Sercial, Verdelho, Boal and Malvasia grapes. Marsala, the famed Italian fortified wine some consider one the world's best, is made in Sicily from Grillo, Inzolia (white), Catarratto and Nerello Mascalese (red) grapes.

If you are searching for a Marsala wine substitute that most closely matches the flavor of the Italian cooking wine, then Madeira is your best choice. Madeira is a fortified wine and has a similar color and flavor to Marsala wine and makes a good one-to-one substitute.