Video Discription |
Coq au vin, chicken in red wine, is an ideal recipe if you want to impress your guests, but don't want to do a lot of washing up. You only need one pan, put all the ingredients in and let time do the hard work.
Ingredients (4 persons):
- Chicken legs, 4 pieces (4 thighs, 4 drumsticks)
- Bacon, 250 grams (one whole piece preferably, cut in strips or cubes)
- Mushrooms, 250 grams (cut in half)
- Carrot, 1 piece (cut in rings)
- Shallots, 12 small shallots (or any other small onions)
- Balsamic vinegar, 1 tablespoon (optional, can also substitute with any other vinegar you like)
- Red wine, 2 glasses
- Chicken stock, 1L (enough to cover the chicken)
- Bay leaves, 3 pieces
- Thyme, 8 sprigs
- Pickled pearl onions, 2 tablespoons (optional)
- Tomato paste, 1 small can (optional)
- Butter
- Olive oil
- Flour
- Lemon
- Parsley
Directions:
1) It's best to first prepare all the ingredients. So cut the chicken legs, cut the bacon in strips, clean and cut the vegetables. This will save you some stress later.
2) Cook the bacon in a medium-high heat pan with a little bit of oil. Put the bacon in when the pan is not too hot. While the pan is heating up, the bacon will slowly start to render out its fat and cook crispy.
3) When the bacon is crispy, take it out of the pan and set it aside. Cook the chicken in the same pan, with the same fat. Don't overcrowd the pan, because the chicken won't brown. Take your time to properly brown the chicken, as this will build up more flavor.
(If you don't want to use the thickening method later, you can flour the chicken pieces before browning. This flour will help to thicken the sauce later).
4) When the chicken is nicely brown, take it out of the pan and set it aside. Take out most of the oil, leave one tablespoon. Then add a tablespoon of butter. Once the butter has melted, add all your vegetables and cook for about 2 minutes while constantly stirring. Make sure all vegetables are looking nice and glossy.
Optional: you can stir in one can of tomato paste and cook it after the vegetables are nicely coated in oil. This tomato paste will also help to thicken the sauce later and give the sauce a more rich flavor.
(In the pan, you can now see all brown sticky bits. It shouldn't be black (burned), but really dark brown. If it's black, you probably had the heat too high, or a pan with a thin bottom. It's best to leave heat on medium to medium-high and a heavy skillet.)
5) Now it's time to deglaze. I use balsamic vinegar to deglaze, but you could also skip this and go straight to the red wine. Add a little bit of vinegar or wine to the pot and start scraping all the sticky bits. Once everything from the bottom gets loose, add all the red wine and keep scraping if there are any sticky bits left.
6) Let the alcohol of the wine evaporate for about 3 minutes. Then place back in the chicken pieces and all the chicken liquids. Add the chicken stock (or just water) until all pieces are barely covered in liquid. Add the bay leaves, thyme, and pickled pearl onions.
7) When everything has come to a boil, cover the lid and set heat to low, and simmer for 1 to 1,5 hours until the chicken is very soft and tender.
8) For plating, place the pieces of chicken in a nice serving dish. Be careful, because the chicken is very tender. Discard the skin, as it has released its flavor and is not so nice to eat at this point.
(The sauce has to be a little bit runny, but not like water. If the sauce is not thick enough, mix two tablespoons of flour with one tablespoon each of olive oil and butter. Place the sauce back on the heat and stir in one tablespoon of the flour mixture at a time and stir. Repeat until the sauce is like a nice jus.)
9) Spoon the sauce over the chicken, with all the nice bits of vegetables. Then scatter the crispy bacon bits all over the pan. To finish it, you can scatter over some fresh chopped parsley and a squeeze of lemon juice.
Serve with mashed or cooked potatoes or even pasta if you like.
Enjoy and see you next time! |