Coq au Vin
Last month we had a pot luck at work. Our entire floor was involved, say just over 100 people. We decided to divide up the teams and each team was to decorate and bring food from a region of the world. Since my team decided I would cook, I got to pick for our team and I choose France/French. I decided to do a Salade Nicoise (recipe to be published at a later date) and Coq au Vin. Plus we picked up a bunch of French cheeses. The chicken got raves reviews, in fact it disappeared fast and people kept coming back looking for more. I have been asked for the recipe by a few people here at the office so I decided to try and re-create it here:
4 lbs skin on, bone in chicken pieces (I used drumsticks but I think this actually works better with all the parts)
1 cup of flour
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon fresh ground black pepper
1 teaspoon granulated garlic powder
1 teaspoon ground thyme
3-5 tablespoons canola oil (you may not need all of this)
2 cups of button mushrooms
1 cups of pearl onions peeled
1 cup of Red wine (to be authentic you should use a Cote du Rhone, but any medium bodied red will work)
2 cups chicken stock
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Sift together the flour, salt, pepper, thyme and garlic powder. Dredge the chicken in this mixture. I find this is easiest in a large zip top type bag. Put the flour mix in, add a couple of pieces of the chicken, toss about until well coated, repeat.
In a dutch oven or other thick bottomed large pot (that is oven safe) heat 2 tablespoons of the canola oil over med-high heat. Once the oil is hot start browning the chicken in stages. Do not add too much of the chicken at once or you will lower the temperature of the oil too quickly. You also want to have the chicken in just one layer in the pot. You want to just brown and crisp the skin here, you are not cooking it all the way through yet. It should take maybe 2-3 minutes per side. Take the chicken out of the pot and set aside while you finish browning the rest. Add more of the canola oil as required.
Once the chicken is all done, make sure you have about 1 tablespoon of oil left in the pot, add a little more if you need it and put the peeled pearl onions in the pot. Stir them around, you want them to caramelize. Season with salt and pepper. Watch the heat once you have finished with the chicken you may need to reduce the heat a little bit, you don’t want to burn the onions. Once there is some good browning on the onions, add the mushrooms. Depending on your mushrooms you may need to add a little bit more oil. Season with salt and pepper. Normally you would do some bacon lardons at the same time, for the work potluck I left out the bacon as we have people in the office that do not eat pork.
Once the mushrooms and onions are good and brown add the cup of red wine and deglaze the pan. Make sure to stir with a wooden spoon at this point, you want to scrape up all the brown bits off the bottom of the pot.Reduce the wine by about 50% and then add the chicken stock. Reduce this by about 25% or so, and then add the chicken back into the pot, stir everything to incorporate and the put on the lid and place in the preheated oven for about 2 hours.
After the two hours is up, check the chicken, make sure it is cooked through. The juices should run clear and there should be no sign of pink to the meat. If you have one you could check the meat with a thermometre, you want to at least 160 degrees.
You can serve this with rice, potatoes or noodles. I like mashed potatoes because then you can pour the gravy over the potatoes.
Enjoy
