Coq au Vin
While on vacation, I decided to try making this chicken and wine dish. I completely forgot to take photos of the process, but I have one of the end result! I served it with a baguette like the one I previously baked and everyone thought the dish tasted good.Here is the finished product!
The only problem with this dish was an excess of carrots, but I fixed that by garnishing with extra bacon!
Serves 4
Ingredients:
1/2 lb bacon slices
Preparation:
1 Blanch the bacon to remove some of its saltiness. Drop the bacon into a saucepan of cold water, covered by a couple of inches. Bring to a boil, simmer for 5 minutes, drain. Rinse in cold water, pat dry with paper towels. Cut the bacon into 1 inch by 1/4 inch pieces.
2 Brown bacon on medium high heat in a dutch oven big enough to hold the chicken, about 10 minutes. Remove the cooked bacon, set aside. Keep the bacon fat in the pan. Working in batches if necessary, add onions and chicken, skin side down. Brown the chicken well, on all sides, about 10 minutes. Halfway through the browning, add the garlic and sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper. (Note: it is best to add salt while cooking, not just at the very end. It brings out the flavor of the chicken.)
3 Spoon off any excess fat. Add the chicken stock, wine, and herbs. Add back the bacon. Lower heat to a simmer. Cover and cook for 20 minutes, or until chicken is tender and cooked through. Remove chicken and onions to a separate platter. Remove the bay leaves, herb sprigs, garlic, and discard.
4 Add mushrooms to the remaining liquid and turn the heat to high. Boil quickly and reduce the liquid by three fourths until it becomes thick and saucy. Lower the heat, stir in the butter. Return the chicken and onions to the pan to reheat and coat with sauce. Adjust seasoning. Garnish with parsley and serve.
Credit to: http://www.simplyrecipes.com
Blanching the bacon worked out fine, and the sauce was way better and the taste more intense than I remembered it (I used a Bordeaux, by the way). Very good!
Thanks, Nina (from northern Germany)
Only one problem. I ate half the bacon while going through the remainder of step 2!
Lots of love in food, don’t you agree?
However, I have a general question about chicken. I really don’t like bones and skin. So I usually use boneless and skinless chicken breasts as a substitute. However, the bones and skin do give the sauce additional flavor and makes it a bit thicker. I just add corn starch and/or some chicken broth to make the sauce richer and thicker.
Again, this is not specific to Coq au Vin. I do the same thing for Asian curries, Mexican dishes, and such. What do you recommend?
Thanks in advance, and keep up the good work with this fantastic blog!
Jeroen…
If you are not cooking with bone-in and skin on, you are missing out on a lot. The marrow in the bones that dissolve into the stew while cooking is filled with important nutrients. Also there is so much flavor in the browned skins! As children we used to fight for the skins. So my advice is to use bone-in and skin on whenever a recipe calls for it, and most of mine do.
Always wanted to try “Coq au Vin”, picked this version off the Internet because it looked simple. Was a raging success with the wife. She insists I make it a regular. Used an Australian Hunter Valley Shiraz (of course), and added some carrots to the mix. Yummy. Thanks a lot.
And here’s a little tip for the pearl onions: blanch them and they will just pop right out of the skin! Well, not in the water, but when you take them out. Great time saver so you don’t have to peel all those little guys.
But I’ve never made it with 6 cloves of garlic. Doesn’t that overwhelm the flavors?
My former back yard rooster’s legs were still chewy at even 30 minutes. For a real rooster, an hour would be a good starting point.
Next time around I plan to try the following:
– blanch the bacon for a shorter window of time
– douse the chicken in flour before browning
– increase the amt of wine by 1 cup to increase both volume of sauce and strength of taste
– add baby carrots along with the mushrooms
I suggest turning up the heat. ~Elise
Thanks Deb, so glad you liked it! ~Elise
What did I do wrong?
No idea. ~Elise
One of us prefers boneless skinless chicken breasts, so we used 1lb drumsticks and 2lbs breasts.
We weren’t sure what to do with the bacon, so we left it in the sauce as it simmered down. It was delicious in the final dish!
Going off topic, I figured out how to keep parsley fresh in the refrigerator for a month or more. Purchase the freshest bunch you can find and when you get it home, cleanly trim the stems using a very sharp knife (I remove about an inch off the bottom and keep the bundle together with a rubber band). Find a plastic container about 3-4 inches in diameter and about 4 inches tall, take a paper towel and fold into quarters and stuff it flat inside the container bottom. Add clean water to moisten the towel plus 1/4 inch of standing water. (I recycled a prepared icing container.) Place the parsley into the container so the freshly cut ends are in contact with the water and paper towel. Tent the “flower pot” using a produce/fruit plastic bag (special green color keep-fresh bags featuring microscopic holes). Closed end on top and open end on bottom. Don’t seal the bag, just let the open end rest on the refrigerator shelf. As you use the parsley, pick off any yellowed leaves and stems then change the water or paper towel as needed. If you can’t find the special keep fresh bags, you can use the grocery store plastic produce bag as the tent — however leaves that touch the plastic will yellow quickly so wrap or drape the parsley bundle top with a paper towel before tenting.
I did use lardons because I can get them them here easily. I did the par boil thing and it took too much of the fat out. Guess I did it too long.
Mine didn’t stick at all- for those of you with that problem- make sure you get a decent quality Dutch oven like Staub or Le Cruset and get it up to operating temp before frying the chicken. It’s nice stuff, lasts a lifetime, and worth the cost if cooking is really your hobby as it is for me.
I didn’t have a problem with purple chicken either- add the stock first then the wine and use a real Burgundy. A true burgundy has a light body and won’t stain your chicken. Also- it goes great with the meal- I used a nice one from Beaune that was six euros a bottle. Very drinkable.
Eet Smaaklijk,
Carl
The Hague
Wish me luck!!!
You don’t. It’s sort of stew-like, which means no crispy skin. ~Elise