Description
This rustic French dish is total comfort food. I mean who doesn’t love chicken, red wine and mushrooms?
Ingredients
4 chicken thighs-bone in and skin on
4 chicken breasts-bone in and skin on-cut into 2 pieces or about 4 lbs total chicken)
3 T bacon fat or butter (About 4–5 slices of bacon) Cook until crisp and reserve bacon for garnish
2 c frozen pearl onions
1 lb fresh crimini mushrooms and I threw in a few ounces of rehydrated morels
3/4 c minced green onions or carrots (Though not traditional)
3 garlic cloves, chopped
3 T cognac
3 T butter
3 T flour
2 c beef stock or one can use all red wine
1 c good dry red wine (this gives a lot of flavor so make sure you like it!)
Salt, pepper, thyme, parsley, bay leaf
Instructions
Melt bacon fat or butter in a large skillet or Dutch oven over medium high heat. Feel free to use bacon and reserve it for a garnish.
Brown chicken that has been seasoned with salt and pepper in the Dutch oven. You will have to do this in separate batches. Remove from pan.
Now add the onions and brown those. Remove onions and add mushrooms and saute until tender. Remove mushrooms and set aside.
Add green onions and garlic and saute until tender.
Deglaze your pan with the cognac and cook while scraping up all the brown bits from the bottom of the pan. Add butter and stir in flour and cook a few minutes while stirring to take away the raw flour taste.
Slowly stir in the stock and the red wine. Stir over medium heat until thickened. Add chicken back and season with thyme, salt, pepper, bay leaf, and parsley-reserving some for garnish.
Bring to a simmer and simmer slowly for about 1/2 hour or until the chicken is tender and the juices run clear. (If you are using the breasts, you may want to add those about 15 minutes after the dark meat, so they don’t dry out.)
Add back mushrooms and onions and simmer covered another hour until the chicken is falling off the bone.
You can eat this right away or chill overnight. Whatever you do, don’t forget to garnish with the crisp bacon!
At this point this is ready to be served or kept in the refrigerator, until reheating for dinner. I love the extra flavor it gets from being chilled. If you chill it, make sure to remove the congealed fat from the surface. Before reheating remove from refrigerator and bring to room temperature. Reheat in a preheated 325 degree oven for about an hour.
I serve this with mashed potatoes, though boiled potatoes or noodles will work also.
Notes
See post above for other notes.
Thanks Laura’s Mom and Julia Child!