Gluten Free Breaded Chicken Cutlets with Mushroom Sauce

In the end you've got tender gluten free breaded chicken with a rich, savory sauce that takes only 20 minutes to cook!

We love hearty one skillet chicken dinners like this - see Skillet Pizza Chicken Casserole and Gluten Free Chicken Parmesan without Breadcrumbs for proof!

Ingredients needed for breaded chicken cutlets with mushroom sauce

- Boneless, skinless chicken breast: For this recipe, you'll need about about 1 pound of chicken breast.

- Cassava flour: My go-to gluten free flour! I love having a ONE ingredient gluten free flour that is relatively consistent across the board. You can substitute an all-purpose gluten free flour if you'd like, but since I haven't tested them all, I'm not sure how it'll taste.

- Mushrooms: For this recipe, I used cremini mushrooms. They're easy to find and relatively inexpensive. You can use shiitake, oyster mushrooms, or whatever other mushrooms you like. I just don't reccommend button mushrooms; they're kind of tasteless.

- Vinegar/Red Cooking Wine: In a typical pan sauce, you'd use cooking wine. Personally, I don't drink at all and don't want to buy wine just to cook with. So I use vinegar! In this recipe, I used red wine vinegar. You can also use red cooking wine, apple cider vinegar, or champagne vinegar.

- Beef broth: Using beef broth adds a depth of flavor I love, but if you'd prefer chicken broth you can use that too. My go-to brand of beef broth is Kettle and Fire.

- Herbs: To add more rustic flavor, I use fresh sage, thyme, and rosemary in the pan sauce. You can substitute dried - just use ¼ teaspoon of each and adjust to taste.

- Coconut aminos + Butter/Ghee: These last two ingredients just add extra flavor and richness to the sauce. Coconut aminos tastes like a sweeter soy sauce, meaning umami punch in the mushroom sauce. The butter or ghee, again, adds richness!

How to make gluten free breaded chicken cutlets

What makes it a cutlet?

Basically, a cutlet is just a thin piece of meat, either sliced thin or pounded to a thin, even thickness. Often, cutlets are breaded (as they are for this recipe), although it's not required for it to be a cutlet.

So, anytime a recipe asks you to pound meat to even thickness, you're making a cutlet!

You have a couple easy options for pounding chicken breasts into cutlets:

• Use a meat mallet to firmly pound down on the meat. (This is my preferred method!)
• Place the meat between two sheets of plastic wrap and use a heavy, flat-bottomed glass or mason jar to pound the meat.
• Carefully slice the chicken breast in half horizontally, parallel to the cutting board.

Once you have your cutlets, you'll simply coat them in cassava flour and fry them in the skillet. Voila - easy breaded chicken cutlets!

Can I substitute a different flour for cassava flour?

While cassava flour is my go-to gluten free flour, I know not everyone loves it as much as I do!

You can easily substitute any all-purpose gluten free flour. I can't guarantee it will stick as well as cassava flour does to the cutlets, though. If you try it out with a different brand or blend, share the results in the comments for others!

I would NOT substitute almond flour or coconut flour. Almond flour is too moist to stick to the chicken, and coconut flour absorbs too much moisture.

Tips and tricks for flavorful pan sauce

Now that you've got the gluten free chicken cutlets down, the next portion of this one skillet recipe involves making a pan sauce.

Just like the name suggests, a pan sauce is a sauce made in the same pan that you've browned other food in.

All of the browned bits on the bottom of the pan get scraped up and incorporated into the sauce, providing an extra depth of flavor. (And, it's worth pointing out, makes cleanup easier later!)

To make a pan sauce, you have to deglaze the pan. Deglazing simply means you pour in some sort of liquid (in this case, beef broth) and use a non-metal spatula to scrape those browned bits up.

Then, allow the mixture to come to a boil and reduce it to a simmer. Let it cook until it's reduced by about half.

There you go: pan sauce!

For this mushroom pan sauce, my goal was a rich, full-flavored sauce. The mushrooms certainly help, but another factor was using beef broth and adding fresh herbs.

You can definitely use chicken broth here, but I'd highly recommend beef broth for that rich, rustic flavor.

FAQs

More one skillet recipes to bookmark for later

I'm a big fan of one skillet meals - my cast iron is my most-used kitchen utensil!

Here are a few more one skillet recipes to try out for yourself.

Of course, you can find even more one-skillet recipes in this blog post rounding up 16 different one-skillet recipes!

Did you try this recipe? I'd love to hear what you think! Comment below or tag me on Instagram.

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