How To Make Coq Au Vin Recipes

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
• Season chicken thighs all over with salt and black pepper.
• Place bacon in a large, oven-proof skillet and cook over medium-high heat, turning occasionally, until evenly browned, about 10 minutes. Transfer bacon with a slotted spoon to a paper-towel lined plate, leaving drippings in the skillet.
• Increase heat to high and place chicken, skin-side down, into skillet. Cook in hot skillet until browned, 2 to 4 minutes per side. Transfer chicken to a plate; drain and discard all but 1 tablespoon drippings from the skillet.
• Lower heat to medium-high; saute mushrooms, onion, and shallots with a pinch of salt in the hot skillet until golden and caramelized, 7 to 12 minutes.
• Stir flour and butter into vegetable mixture until completely incorporated, about 1 minute.
• Pour red wine into the skillet and bring to a boil while scraping browned bits of food off of the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon. Stir bacon and thyme into red wine mixture; simmer until wine is about 1/3 reduced, 3 to 5 minutes. Pour chicken broth into wine mixture and set chicken thighs into skillet; bring wine and stock to a simmer.
• Cook chicken in the preheated oven for 30 minutes. Spoon pan juices over the chicken and continue cooking until no longer pink at the bone and the juices run clear, about 30 minutes more. An instant-read thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the thigh, near the bone should read 165 degrees F (74 degrees C). Transfer chicken to a platter.
• Place skillet over high heat and reduce pan juices, skimming fat off the top as necessary, until sauce thickens slightly, about 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper; remove and discard thyme. Pour sauce over chicken.

Steps:

• Cut off the root end of each pearl onion and make an "x" with your knife in its place. Bring 2 to 3 cups of water to a boil and drop in the onions for 1 minute. Remove the onions from the pot, allow them to cool, and then peel. You should be able to slide the onions right out of their skin. Set aside.
• Sprinkle the chicken on all sides with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper. Place the chicken pieces, a few at a time, into a large (1 or 2-gallon) sealable plastic bag along with the flour. Shake to coat all of the pieces of the chicken. Remove the chicken from the bag to a metal rack.
• Add the 2 tablespoons of water to a large, 12-inch saute pan over medium heat along with the salt pork. Cover and cook until the water is gone, and then continue to cook until the salt pork cubes are golden brown and crispy, approximately 8 to 10 minutes. Remove the salt pork from the pan and set aside.
• In the same pan, using the remaining fat, add the pearl onions, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and saute until lightly brown, approximately 8 to 10 minutes. Remove the onions from the pan and set aside. Next, brown the chicken pieces on each side until golden brown, working in batches if necessary to not overcrowd the pan. Transfer the chicken into a 7 to 8-quart enameled cast iron Dutch oven.
• Add the mushrooms to the same 12-inch saute pan, adding the 1 tablespoon of butter if needed, and saute until they give up their liquid, approximately 5 minutes. Store the onions, mushrooms and pork in an airtight container in the refrigerator until ready to use.
• Pour off any remaining fat and deglaze the pan with approximately 1 cup of the wine. Pour this into the Dutch oven along with the chicken stock, tomato paste, quartered onion, carrots, celery, garlic, thyme, and bay leaf. Add all of the remaining wine. Cover and refrigerate overnight.
• The next day, preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
• Place the chicken in the oven and cook for 2 to 2 1/2 hours, or until the chicken is tender. Maintain a very gentle simmer and stir occasionally.
• Once the chicken is done, remove it to a heatproof container, cover, and place it in the oven to keep warm. Strain the sauce in a colander and remove the carrots, onion, celery, thyme, garlic, and bay leaf. Return the sauce to the pot, place over medium heat, and reduce by 1/3. Depending on how much liquid you actually began with, this should take 20 to 45 minutes.
• Once the sauce has thickened, add the pearl onions, mushrooms, and pork and cook for another 15 minutes or until the heated through. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary, remove from the heat, add the chicken and serve. Serve over egg noodles, if desired.
• Cook¿s Note: If the sauce is not thick enough at the end of reducing, you may add a mixture of equal parts butter and flour kneaded together. Start with 1 tablespoon of each. Whisk this into the sauce for 4 to 5 minutes and repeat, if necessary.

Steps:

• In large skillet, cook bacon over medium heat until crisp, stirring occasionally. Remove with a slotted spoon; drain on paper towels. Brown chicken on both sides in drippings over medium heat. Transfer chicken to a 3-qt. slow cooker., Add the mushrooms, onion and garlic to skillet; cook and stir just until tender, 1-2 minutes. Spoon over chicken; add bay leaf., In a small bowl, whisk the flour, wine, broth, thyme and pepper until smooth; pour over chicken., Cover; cook on low until chicken is tender, 5-6 hours. Discard bay leaf. If desired, serve with noodles. Top with bacon.

Steps:

• Braising chicken in wine is an age-old tradition, and a method used all over France. You brown the meat, add liquid to the pot, be it water, wine or stock, and then set it over low heat for a lengthy simmer. That initial browning creates the foundation of the sauce, lending complex layers of flavor to the final dish.In a traditional coq au vin, which hails from the Burgundy region, wine is used both to tenderize what was traditionally a tough old rooster (a coq in French) and to imbue the meat with its heady flavor. When the bird is slowly simmered, often for hours and hours as the oldest recipes suggest, its sinewy flesh slackens, growing soft and aromatic, and easily yielding to the fork.As the simmering wine seasons the chicken, the chicken seasons the wine, helping transform it into a savory sauce. The wine, which reduces as it cooks, also takes on the other flavors in the pot, in this case brandy, mushrooms, onions, bacon and herbs, along with the savory fond - that is, the caramelized bits on the bottom of the pan that you get from the initial browning of the chicken. The young, tender chickens of today cook more quickly than those earlier birds, but they are imbued with similar lusty flavors.There are variations of coq au vin all over France, each a celebration of local wines both red and white. In Alsace, a dry riesling is used, resulting in a lighter, brighter sauce that is often enriched with a little cream or crème fraîche stirred in at the end. The Jura and the Champagne regions also have their own recipes; cooks in the Jura sometimes substitute morels for the more common white or brown button mushrooms. In Beaujolais, the young dark purple nouveau wine gives that dish the name coq au violet. But Burgundy's version, made with its local wine, is the best known across France and all over the world.No matter what kind of wine you pour into your pot, the method of simmering it with chicken or other meat is applicable across the kitchen. Case in point: Boeuf bourguignon, another French classic, is essentially coq au vin made with chunks of stewing beef instead of fowl. Mastering this one technique leads to many excellent dinners.
• Legend has it that Julius Caesar himself introduced a version of coq au vin to France. As the commonly cited (and thoroughly apocryphal) story goes, the Celtic Gauls sent a rooster to Caesar during the Roman occupation. Caesar had his cook stew it in herbs and Roman wine and then returned it to the Gauls. Whether or not this is true, the tradition of simmering poultry in wine does indeed date to ancient Rome, and perhaps even further back.Because the main ingredient of a coq au vin was historically a tough old rooster, it is very likely that the earliest versions were peasant fare. Recipes calling for rooster rarely graced the early tracts on French cooking in the 17th and 18th centuries, which documented food for the wealthy. It wasn't until the more current substitution of tender chicken in the 19th century that the dish and all its variations entered the French canon. That the Burgundian version emerged as the most prominent in the United States is because of Julia Child, who championed the recipe as a symbol of the sophistication and verve of French country cooking.Above, "Still Life" by Jacopo da Empoli (1551-1640).
• Dutch oven A 6- to 8-quart Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed pot with lid (a rondeau pot) is an essential tool for a braise. If the pot is too small, the liquid won't evaporate enough to give you a rich sauce; if it's too large, the wine in the pot won't sufficiently cover the chicken.Skillet The pearl onions and mushrooms for the topping are cooked separately from the chicken, so they have their own distinct flavor and texture. A 10-inch skillet with a lid is ideal.Tongs A good pair of kitchen tongs will help you maneuver the chicken as you brown it, allowing you to fully sear the skin all over.Wirecutter, a product recommendations website owned by The New York Times Company, has a guide to the best Dutch ovens and nonstick pans.
• This recipe for coq au vin yields a supremely rich sauce filled with tender chicken, crisp bits of bacon, mushrooms and burnished pearl onions. Traditional versions call for a whole cut-up chicken, but using only dark meat gives you a particularly succulent dish. The crouton garnish adds a buttery crunch.
• You want to build flavor in the pan at every step, which enriches the sauce and gives it body. That begins with the meat, which should be seared deeply to create a brawny base.• Using only bone-in dark meat makes the stew richer and thicker, because of the marrow in the bones. And dark meat isn't as prone to drying out as white meat. However, it is traditional to use a whole chicken, cut into pieces, and you can do that if you'd prefer; just add the breast to the pot 30 minutes after adding the dark meat.• Marinating the chicken before browning it will give you a more evenly seasoned bird whose flesh is fully imbued with wine. The ideal marination time is 24 hours, but even four to six hours helps the cause.• To get a good sear, the chicken must be fully dry. Otherwise, moisture will steam the skin instead of browning it. Pat it well with paper towels after marinating.• Take your time when browning the meat; it's one of the most important steps for getting robust flavor out of the chicken, and creates a brawny base for the sauce. Plan to spend at least 15 to 25 minutes at the stove for this step, searing the pieces in batches. Use tongs to hold the chicken and change its position, pressing it into the pan when necessary, so that all sides make contact with the hot metal to get a deep sear.• Some coq au vin recipes call for chicken stock to replace a portion of the wine, which accentuates meaty notes in the finished sauce. But this can dilute the wine flavor. The bacon and the searing of the chicken skin provide sufficient meatiness here, so this recipe omits the stock.• Sautéing the tomato paste with the vegetables caramelizes the tomato. It also eliminates any metallic flavor, which can be an issue with canned tomato paste.• Adding flour to the pot helps thicken the sauce. Here, it is stirred into the vegetables while they're browning, which allows the taste of raw flour to cook off.• Brandy brings complexity to the final dish. Igniting the brandy in the pot is a quick way to cook out much of the alcohol, and it's easier than you think. Use a long-handled igniter or match to light the flame. It burns out pretty quickly, so there is not much to fear. However, you can skip this step and simply let the brandy cook down in the pan for 1 minute.• Here, the wine is boiled down for about 12 minutes before the chicken is added to the pot. This makes for a more intense sauce without overcooking the chicken.• One quick way to peel pearl onions for the topping is to blanch them for 1 minute in a pot of boiling water. Drain, let cool, then slip off their skins. (Frozen peeled onions tend to be very soggy, and therefore much harder to caramelize because of their high moisture content. Use them only as a last resort.)• A garnish of crisp toasted bread provides a textural contrast to the soft chicken, but feel free to leave it out.• Like all braises, coq au vin is best made a day ahead, so the flavors have a chance to intensify. Let it cool completely, then store it in the refrigerator. To reheat, first spoon off and discard any solidified fat on the surface, then place the pot over a low flame for about 20 to 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Or reheat it in a 350-degree oven for about 30 minutes. It's best to prepare the onions and mushrooms, and the croutons, just before serving.• Serve with a green salad, and a good bottle of Burgundy.
• Like coq au vin, its sister dish from Burgundy, boeuf Bourguignon is a stew of meat slowly simmered in red wine along with pearl onions, mushrooms and bacon. Use a good wine here, something simple but drinkable. It makes all the difference in the finished dish. As with all beef stews, this one is best made a day or two ahead, but don't sauté the mushrooms and onions until just before serving.
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Steps:

• Season chicken with 2 1/4 teaspoons salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper. In a large bowl, combine chicken, wine, bay leaf and thyme. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or, even better, overnight.
• In a large Dutch oven or a heavy-bottomed pot with a tightfitting lid, cook lardons over medium-low heat until fat has rendered, and lardons are golden and crisp, 10 to 15 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer lardons to a paper-towel-lined plate, leaving rendered fat in pot.
• Remove chicken from wine, reserving the marinade. Pat chicken pieces with paper towels until very dry. Heat lardon fat over medium heat until it's just about to smoke. Working in batches if necessary, add chicken in a single layer and cook until well browned, 3 to 5 minutes per side. (Add oil if the pot looks a little dry.) Transfer chicken to a plate as it browns.
• Add diced onion, carrot, half the mushrooms and the remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt to pot. Cook until vegetables are lightly browned, about 8 minutes, stirring up any brown bits from the pot, and adjusting heat if necessary to prevent burning.
• Stir in garlic and tomato paste and cook for 1 minute, then stir in flour and cook for another minute. Remove from heat, push vegetables to one side of pot, pour brandy into empty side, and ignite with a match. (If you're too nervous to ignite it, just cook brandy down for 1 minute.) Once the flame dies down, add reserved marinade, bring to a boil, and reduce halfway (to 1 1/2 cups), about 12 minutes. Skim off any large pockets of foam that form on the surface.
• Add chicken, any accumulated juices and half the cooked lardons to the pot. Cover and simmer over low heat for 1 hour, turning halfway through. Uncover pot and simmer for 15 minutes to thicken. Taste and add salt and pepper, if necessary.
• Meanwhile, melt 1 tablespoon butter and 2 tablespoons oil in a nonstick or other large skillet over medium-high heat. Add pearl onions, a pinch of sugar and salt to taste. Cover, reduce heat to low and cook for 15 minutes, shaking skillet often to move onions around. Uncover, push onions to one side of skillet, add remaining mushrooms, and raise heat to medium-high. Continue to cook until browned, stirring mushrooms frequently, and gently tossing onions occasionally, 5 to 8 minutes. Remove onions and mushrooms from skillet, and wipe it out.
• In same skillet, melt 2 tablespoons butter and 1 tablespoon oil over medium heat until bubbling. Add bread and toast on all sides until golden, about 2 minutes per side. (Adjust heat if needed to prevent burning.) Remove from skillet and sprinkle with salt.
• To serve, dip croutons in wine sauce, then coat in parsley. Add pearl onions, mushrooms and remaining half of the cooked lardons to the pot. Baste with wine sauce, sprinkle with parsley and serve with croutons on top.

Steps:

• In a shallow dish, combine flour, thyme and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Dip chicken in flour mixture to coat both sides; shake off excess., In a Dutch oven or high-sided skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat. Cook chicken until golden brown, 3-4 minutes per side. Remove from pan; keep warm. , In same pan, cook mushrooms, carrots, bacon, tomato paste and remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt for 2 minutes. Add broth and wine; bring to a boil. Return chicken to pan; reduce heat. Cook until chicken reaches 170° and carrots are just tender, 8-10 minutes. If desired, top with chopped fresh thyme.

Steps:

• Cut wings from the chicken, cutting at the joints into 3 pieces. Cut the remaining chicken into 4 pieces, 2 breasts and 2 legs. Remove skin and bones from the breasts. Set breasts aside with the 4 meatier wing pieces.
• Pull of skin from the chicken legs and remove tips from the drumsticks. Cut down each side of the thigh bone and slide your knife under the bone to separate meat from it. Holding the thigh bone, cut all around the joint at the knee and pull out the bones. Add the legs to the breasts and wings.
• Combine pearl onions, water, 1 tablespoon olive oil, and sugar in a large saucepan; bring to a boil and cook until water is evaporated and onions begin to fry, 2 to 4 minutes. Continue cooking and stirring, shaking the pan occasionally, until onions are lightly browned and glazed on all sides, 5 to 7 minutes. Add mushrooms; cook and stir for 1 minute. Remove from heat and cover.
• Heat remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat; add chicken wings and cook, stirring frequently, until lightly browned on all sides, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the legs; cook and stir until browned, 2 to 3 minutes per side. Add breasts; cook and stir until browned, 2 minutes per side. Transfer chicken pieces to a plate.
• Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).
• Place onion in the same skillet used for the chicken; cook and stir for 1 minute. Add garlic; cook until fragrant, about 10 seconds. Add 1 1/2 cups red wine, bay leaves, thyme, salt, and pepper; bring to a boil. Return legs and wings to the skillet; cover and simmer gently for 5 minutes. Add chicken breasts and simmer gently until chicken is no longer pink in the center, about 6 minutes.
• Stir 2 tablespoons red wine and potato starch together in a bowl until dissolved; stir into chicken mixture until sauce is thickened, 2 to 3 minutes. Add pearl onions and mushrooms with their juices; keep warm.
• Cut each slice of bread diagonally in half to form 2 triangles. Trim each triangle into a heart shape. Spread canola oil onto a baking sheet and press bread hearts into the oil so they are moistened on both sides.
• Bake in the preheated oven until croutons are browned, 8 to 10 minutes.
• Dip the tip of each crouton into the sauce; press into parsley until coated.
• Cut chicken breasts and legs in half. Serve 1 breast piece, 1 drumstick or thigh, and 1 wing per person with 2 croutons and spoonfuls of sauce and vegetables. Sprinkle remaining parsley over chicken.