In this series, we’ll take a look at recipes from professional chefs and streamline them to capture their essence, while still prioritizing actually eating dinner at a reasonable hour. We’re starting with coq au vin, a French standby that takes some chefs three days to make.
Coq au vin, literally “rooster in wine” in French, is a dish that’s as old as the hills. There’s a legend that it was invented by Julius Caesar’s chef while Caesar was busy invading France, though others say the rustic stew existed long before the famous Roman bully ever set food in Gaul.
The recipe itself wasn’t set down on paper until the early 20th century, but it’s undoubtedly Julia Child — or more precisely, Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle, and Julia Child — who made chicken braised in red wine truly famous in their seminal 1961 cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Their recipe is about as close to the humble dish’s apogee as one can get. And yet, variations resurface constantly, many requiring crazy amounts of prep time. Like, all-weekend-long marinating, simmering, and reducing time. (And that doesn’t even include the superfluous lardon-making!)
Traditionally, coq au vin was made with roosters that had outlived their usefulness as breeders in the barnyard. Their meat was tough and sinewy, so it required a good long soak in wine to help tenderize it. While some chefs still marinate their chicken for a night or more, Julia and company skip this step, probably because modern-day chickens are younger and more tender than those old coqs.
Julia calls for a 2 ½- to 3-pound fryer, cut up, but doesn’t specify how many pieces. I opt for the leg and thigh, as they’re much less likely to dry out while braising (breast meat tends to get cottony when cooked this way). Bone-in is key here, as it builds flavor in the sauce. Anyone who says boneless will do is just plain wrong.
Speaking of the sauce, Julia whisks in a flour-butter mixture (beurre manié in French) at the end of cooking to thicken it. I prefer to dredge the chicken pieces in flour before browning them in the pan at the beginning. This accomplishes the same function — thickening the sauce — without adding extra fat. Julia deglazes the pan with cognac and sets it on fire to burn off the alcohol. We’re not a brandy household, and pricey cognac even less so, so I skip this step. “Brandy is for making Wisconsin Old Fashioneds, not for cooking chickens,” said someone’s grandpa, somewhere.
Next, Julia calls for a chunk of lean bacon to be boiled and cut into strips called lardons. The boiling was likely to remove some of the smoky flavor of the bacon, to which American readers would have resorted in lieu of traditional French salted pork belly. I skip boiling bacon (because, yikes) and use pre-diced pancetta instead. The mild Italian pork belly adds the requisite pork flavor with no additional smokiness, plus in pre-diced form, it requires zero extra effort. I add the pancetta in with the onions and carrots, where it cooks up into crispy little nubbins in the exact amount of time it takes to brown the vegetables. One less pan to wash — how convenient.
And about that dishwashing: After cooking her recipe as written, I realized that Julia must have had a professional dishwasher on staff. Sadly, I don’t. So, when Julia says to saute mushrooms in a separate pan and add them to the chicken at the end of the cooking process, a detail called garniture in the French cooking lexicon, I ignore her. I just chuck presliced mushrooms in the pan at the same time I saute the other vegetables. Same great flavor, less scrubbing later.
Julia has you painstakingly peel and brown pearl onions, too. What a pain. Finding teeny tiny pearl onions is daunting enough, to say nothing of blanching and peeling them. That’s why the good folks at Birds Eye sell frozen peeled pearl onions! You can also skip the part where you brown them. Simply add the onions to the pan with the sauce and chicken and they’ll turn out just fine — perhaps not as perfectly caramelized as Julia might like, but certainly quicker, and just as tasty.
After the vegetables, Julia adds 3 cups of Burgundy and 1 to 2 cups of brown chicken stock to the pan. Since she later cooks it all down, I just start with less liquid. One cup of nice, dry, American pinot noir does the trick. Pick something that you’ll enjoy drinking the rest of with dinner.
As for brown chicken stock: It is not to be found in my freezer, nor any grocery store that I know of, so I opt for a chicken bone broth. This has a more concentrated flavor than standard canned chicken broth, thus mimicking the reduction process. (Just make sure you don’t buy a brand that’s very vinegar-forward, as some “sipping broths” are — I like Kettle & Fire.) A cup each of red wine and bone broth is plenty to efficiently braise the chicken parts; there’s no need to drown the meat.
Interestingly, Julia stirs a bit of tomato paste and two mashed garlic cloves into her braising liquid. Everything I’ve learned in culinary school, working in restaurants, and avid cookbook scouring has suggested it’s better to saute tomato paste and garlic in oil, not boil them in liquid. The tomato paste will brown on the bottom of the pan, creating a sweet, caramelized flavor, and the raw garlic will mellow after a minute or so, so I moved this step to just after sauteeing the vegetables earlier in the recipe.
Once the sauce is built, the browned chicken goes back in the pan, where it simmers for about half an hour. If the sauce looks thin, I uncover the pot for the last 5 to 10 minutes of cooking to help evaporate some of the liquid. The resulting chicken is very tender, with a rich, thick wine and mushroom sauce that will wow anyone lucky enough to taste it.
Oh, and it’s ready in under an hour. It might not be mistaken for Julia’s OG version, but for a Tuesday night, this one is pretty damn good. Pass the rest of that bottle of pinot, dinner is ready!
Easy Coq au Vin Recipe
Serves 4 to 6
Ingredients:
3 bone-in, skin on chicken thighs
3 bone-in, skin on chicken drumsticks
¼ cup all-purpose flour
Salt and pepper
2 tablespoons safflower or avocado oil
3 ounces (½ cup) diced pancetta
8 ounces (3 cups) sliced cremini mushrooms
3 carrots, halved lengthwise and sliced
½ medium yellow onion, finely chopped
½ teaspoon dried thyme leaves
½ teaspoon dried savory leaves
2 medium garlic cloves, sliced
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 cup dry red wine, such as pinot noir
1 cup good-quality chicken bone broth, such as Kettle & Fire
½ cup frozen pearl onions
8 ounces egg noodles or new potatoes, cooked
Instructions:
Step 1: Season the chicken all over with 1 teaspoon of salt and ½ teaspoon of pepper. Dredge the chicken in the flour and shake off the excess; set aside.
Step 2: Heat the oil in a large (11- to 12-inch) saute pan over medium-high heat until hot. Add the chicken skin-side down and cook without disturbing until golden brown, 4 minutes. Flip the chicken with tongs and continue to cook until the second side is browned, 4 minutes more, adjusting heat if the chicken begins to burn.
Step 3: Add the pancetta and cook for 1 minute, stirring occasionally. Add the mushrooms, carrots, onions, thyme, and savory and cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables begin to brown, 5 minutes. Add the garlic and tomato paste and cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant, 30 seconds.
Step 4: Add the wine and bring to a boil, scraping up the browned bits on the bottom of the pan. Add the chicken broth and stir. Nestle the chicken skin side up into the pan. Cover, reduce heat to medium or medium-low to maintain a gentle simmer, and cook for 15 minutes.
Step 5: Flip the chicken with tongs and add the pearl onions to the pan. Continue to simmer until the chicken is tender and cooked through at the bone (it will no longer be pink when you nick it and peek), about 15 minutes. If you would like the sauce to be thicker, uncover the pan the last 5 to 10 minutes of cooking.
Step 6: Season the sauce with salt and pepper to taste and skim off any clear fat floating on top of the sauce. Serve the chicken and sauce over egg noodles or boiled new potatoes.
Ivy Manning is a Portland, Oregon-based award-winning food writer and author of 10 cookbooks including Tacos A to Z: A Delicious Guide to Nontraditional Tacos. She is a regular recipe tester and editor for Eater and restaurants and appliance brands.
Dina Ávila is a photographer in Portland, Oregon.
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