Chicken Parm Smackdown: Bon Appetit vs Joshua Weissman

Trevor’s brother is a big supporter of the blog. He’s constantly harassing family members to read the posts and even loaned us his DSLR to use for photos (if you noticed an improvement in photo quality starting around February 2019, that’s why). He also happens to love chicken parmesan and is getting married in a few months. So as a thank you for the years of support, and as a really bad wedding present, we present our review of two chicken parm recipes — Bon Appetit and Joshua Weissman. This one’s for you, Connor. 

The Sauce

BA’s and Joshua Weissman’s sauces are very different. BA uses tomato purée and tomato paste, while Weissman uses crushed San Marzano tomatoes. Wait, crushed? We thought that San Marzano tomatoes could only be bought whole. Have we been misled this entire time? 

Anyways, we used whole tomatoes and crushed them down with a wooden spoon during the cooking process.

🍅 Mediocre Tip: Not all San Marzano tomatoes are real! Check out this article to find brands that are real San Marzano tomatoes. Why are they so damn expensive? Because they taste really, really good. They are worth a splurge every once in a while. 

Another big difference between the two recipes: BA uses both garlic and onion, while Weissman’s recipe calls for garlic and bacon (or pancetta), along with Thai or Fresno chilies. Weissma’s sauce also says that you can optionally add thyme and parmesan — we added some thyme, but no parm. (After all, our chicken is going to be covered with it, along with mozzarella.) 

🧀 Mediocre Tip: Instead of adding grated parm, if you have some parm rinds laying around, add those instead and remove them from the sauce before serving. They’ll impart some awesome flavor!

Both recipes call for red pepper flakes, salt, and sugar. These three are all must-haves if you try to customize your own chicken parm sauce! 

➡️ Our Verdict? We enjoyed BA’s sauce a lot more. However, we’d be willing to try Weissman’s sauce again with two chilis instead of one — we chickened out a bit and just used one. 🐔🌶️

The Breading

Can we let you in on a secret? We used the same breading and egg wash for both even though the recipes are slightly different. 🤫

The two recipes use the same preparation of the chicken breast by cutting them in half and pounding them with a meat tenderizer. Both recipes also use the standard flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs approach to coat the chicken breasts. 

While both recipes want you to whisk beaten eggs with a little bit of water, BA’s recipe also adds garlic powder, onion powder, and salt. This is the first time we’d ever seen those added to an eggwash and we weren’t sure what to think. Both recipes use Panko, which is superior to regular breadcrumbs, so we approve!

BA’s recipe calls for you to marinate/brine the chicken breasts in a mixture of garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, and salt for a while before you go to coat them. To be honest, we didn’t really notice a difference in terms of flavour or texture. It was deep fried chicken. Your mileage may vary.

➡️ Our Verdict? Since we used the same breading and egg wash for both, we can’t really give a preference on one over the other. However, we did find it a bit weird that BA recommends to mix the garlic and onion powder into the egg. We did this and no matter how much we whisked, we still had little chunks of spice (he who controls the spice controls the universe recipe). Next time we’ll be adding our spices to the bread crumbs. 

The Cooking

Ah yes, frying meat in oil. It seems so easy. Put oil in pan, put pan on heat, put meat in hot oil, take meat out of hot oil. Should be super simple right? Wrong. For some reason, we can not seem to get a handle on keeping the oil at the right temperature. 

Both recipes utilized the same principles although they differed on temperature. Spoiler, we used the same oil temperature for both because we were hungry and it was a Sunday evening. (Okay, Brittany wanted to eat.)

🌡️ Mediocre Tip: Use an instant-read thermometer to ensure that your oil is at the right temperature. The ideal temperature is 400°F. If you use a thermometer that isn’t an instant read, you’re going to get an inaccurate reading, which means that you’re going to have oil that is either too hot or too cold. Save yourself from burnt bread crumbs — use an instant read thermometer. (We like the Thermapen.)

We fried up Weissman’s version first and because we used a temperature probe that wasn’t an instant read (and didn’t leave it in because, as you will see later, we are fools), we got super inaccurate temperature readings. As a result, Weissman’s chicken turned out a little extra crispy. 

After we realized the error of our ways, we let the oil cool off a bit and then fried the BA recipe chicken. These turned out much better, albeit still a little bit more crispy than we would have liked.

🧂 Mediocre Tip: Sprinkle some salt on top of your freshly deep-fried chicken for some extra flavor.

The final step before you get to enjoy some chicken parm is to cover them in sauce and then make it rain with cheese. Throw them under the broiler and watch as the cheese melts. Mmmm…. cheese.

This looks burnt but we swear it’s not — it’s dark brown, not black.

🤬 Mediocre Rant: The recipes called for different ratios of cheese. BA calls for a ratio of 8 oz parmesan and 12 oz mozzarella and Weissman wants 3½  cups mozzarella to ¾ cup parmesan (although in fairness Weissman did offer a measurement in grams). We are calling on all recipe developers to standardize their shit to measure dry ingredients by weight, preferably in grams. As an act of defiance, we just eyeballed a rough ratio of parmesan to mozzarella. #StickinItToTheMan

What Should I Pair Chicken Parmesan With?

The classic pairing is chicken parmesan and spaghetti — we used some leftover sauce from the chicken parm to coat our noodles. 

Other great pairings include:

Mediocre Thoughts

👩‍🍳 Trevor: Chicken parm is always going to be a good time. It’s not very often that you get a bad chicken parm — it is just fried chicken and melted cheese with tomato sauce after all. In terms of the recipes we tried, I enjoyed both, but I feel like BA’s version was the better one. And since we used the same breading, egg wash, and cheese blend, it really came down to the sauce. 

I don’t think Weissman’s sauce was bad per se, and, admittedly, we did change some of the ingredient ratios a bit, but I much preferred BA’s sauce. When I think of North American Italian tomato sauce, BA’s sauce is closer to the taste I have in mind. That being said, I would like to give Weissman’s sauce a proper try again and see if my opinion changes.

👩‍🍳 Brittany: I love chicken parm. I’ve made BA’s recipe a few times, so I may be a bit biased when I say that I love it more than Weissman’s. I really think what threw me off with Weissman’s recipe was the bacon (or pancetta) in the sauce. Without any onion, the flavor didn’t taste balanced to me. I DO love that his recipe uses San Marzano tomatoes — I buy these when I am feeling extra-fancy. But honestly, if you make any chicken parm recipe with regular run-o-the-mill crushed tomatoes, it’s going to taste great too. Maybe it’s because of all of that cheese… BA mentions using the leftover chicken parm (if there is any, it’s so good there might not be) in a sandwich. I am definitely trying that next time!

Final Review

We were fools. FOOLS. We didn’t ask Trevor’s brother what chicken parmesan recipe he uses on the regular. Turns out it’s Action Bronson’s recipe! So you can expect an update from us in the future when we try out Bronson’s chicken parm recipe. 

Our final verdict: you can’t really go wrong with deep fried chicken, sauce, and cheese. However, we prefer BA’s recipe over Weissman’s. Give them both a try and let us know what you think. If you have an all-time favorite chicken parmesan recipe, drop it in the comments below!

Recipe Review, Chicken RecipesMediocre ChefComment