An early Happy Bastille Day! Joyeux quatorze juillet! Bonne Fête Nationale! It’s actually tomorrow, but I’m giving you a day’s notice so you can gather everything you’ll need to make Coq au Vin to celebrate.
Coq au Vin means “Rooster in Wine” in French. “Coq” is where we get our term “cock” from, the kind that crows at sunrise, not the one that sometimes grows at sunrise. If you see an old recipe that still uses rooster, it will call for braising in wine for a long, long period of time. That’s because rooster is very tough and needs to be tenderized. If you use chicken, which I think most North Americans would, don’t do this, your chicken will turn into a very unappealing soggy mush. Chicken is tender enough. The other thing is a traditional French recipe will call for lardons, which are strips of fatty pork. Good luck finding that. Pancetta is, I believe, the same thing. I am assuming that neither are to be reasonably had, so use good old (and considerably cheaper) fatty bacon.
This will serve 4, and it’s a little [Ed. note: to put it mildly] too much work to halve the recipe and just make it for 2. But maybe you are in the first bloom of romance and would. I’m years past that stage. I save this for when we have another couple over.
Ready? Into the kitchen we go.
Ingredients
3 pound chicken pieces, can use boneless or bone-in
4 ounces bacon
½ pound button mushrooms
12-24 fresh pearl onions, peeled and a small “X” cut in bottom of each root stem [Matt’s note: If you don’t make the little x’s the onions will fall apart.]
2-3 cups dry red wine, like a Burgundy [Matt’s note: Coq au Vin is a Burgundian recipe so use Burgundy.] [Additional note: More for drinking to get you through this grueling process make the occasion even more festive.]
1-2 cups beef broth [Matt’s note: not stock]
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2 cloves garlic, minced [Matt’s Note: I use more, say 3 to 4]
1 bay leaf
½ teaspoon dried thyme
¼ cup cognac
olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
For Beurre Manié:
3 tablespoon unsalted butter, softened
3 tablespoon flour
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Cut bacon into strips and sauté over medium heat until light brown in a heavy bottomed, large casserole or dutch oven. Remove and set aside, leaving bacon fat in the pan.
Season chicken pieces with salt and pepper, add a few teaspoons of olive oil to the pan, if needed, and brown chicken on all sides. Return bacon to the pan with the chicken, cover and simmer for 10 minutes (skip this 10 minute cooking step if using boneless chicken).
Uncover pan, increase heat to medium-high, add cognac and flambé (or just reduce slightly until some of alcohol evaporates). Add red wine and reduce slightly. Reduce heat to low, add stock, stir in tomato paste, garlic, bay leaf, and thyme. Bring to a simmer, cover and simmer for about 25-30 minutes or until chicken is cooked through.
While the chicken is cooking, heat a teaspoon or two of olive oil in a medium sized skillet over medium-high, add the pearl onions and sauté until browned. Add ¼ to ⅓ cup of water to the pan (enough to cover the bottom and come up half way to onions), cover and steam them until tender, about 15-20 minutes or until tender. Remove the cooked onions to a bowl.
Using the same medium skillet, heat a teaspoon or two of olive oil over medium-high heat and sauté the mushrooms until light brown. Add the cooked mushrooms to the onion in the bowl and set aside.
When chicken is finished cooking, remove from pan and skim off excessive fat.
Make the beurre manié by creaming butter and flour together in small bowl. Heat the chicken cooking liquid over medium heat and beat the beurre manié into the liquid with a whisk. Simmer for a few minutes or until sauce is thickened.
Add chicken back to pan with the cooked onions and mushrooms. Stir well, taste and adjust seasonings, then simmer for a just a few minutes to pull all flavors together and to heat everything through.
I would eat Julia Child’s coq au vin in a heartbeat.
That sounds quite good, and not too very difficult!
It’s a little bit of a pain in the butt and there are good, simpler recipes online. But for Bastille Day we must not cut corners so we Americans turn to our beloved French Chef to celebrate the founding of the French Republic.
For the lardons, Salt Pork can be an even better choice than bacon is!💖
Salt pork is available as a “block” shape, or pre-sliced at places like Walmart. And the sliced package can be split into 3, with two getting frozen for later use😉
The main difference between SP & Bacon is that the bacon usually gets smoked when it’s cured–salt pork *isn’t* smoked–it’s just cured with a TON of salt.
I discovered the sliced stuff at Walmart, after my roommates & I watched the first few episodes of The French Chef-
it started off with Boeuf Bourguignon (which is what I made!);
https://youtu.be/nW_Tpken5cg
And we discovered that the modern equivalent of her “boil the lardons/bacon to remove the salt/smoke flavor” was simply using Salt Pork instead & cutting it into “match sticks” (which is why the sliced salt pork is *so* much easier to use😉💖)
And AWESOME recipe choice, Cousin Matty!
Coq au Vin is futzy, but really easy, too!
As is her Boeuf Bourguignon (mostly the same, but with beef!)!!!💖
Also–if any of y’all ever end up with the meat of an old (1 year+) laying hen, that bird would be a great candidate for the old-school “low & slow” technique that one would use on a rooster!
Having grown up in a family that butchered our own meat (when I was a child), I learned growing up that “meat chickens” are typically hatched in the early spring & butchered in the late summer/early fall.
But laying hens will produce eggs for years, so when butchered, their meat is often tougher, like a rooster’s.