Coq au Vin Blanc

- Total Time
- 1 hour 20 minutes
- Rating
- Comments
- Read comments
Advertisement
Ingredients
- 1tablespoon grape-seed oil
- 13½-pound chicken, in 10 pieces without backbone, dried
- Salt and ground white pepper
- 8ounces white pearl onions, blanched 3 minutes and peeled
- 1medium onion, finely chopped
- ¼cup finely chopped celery
- 4cloves garlic, sliced
- 9ounces oyster mushrooms, trimmed, clumps separated
- ¾cup chardonnay
- 1tablespoon lemon juice
- 2tablespoons butter (unsalted or black truffle)
- 1tablespoon minced tarragon
Preparation
- Step 1
Heat the oil on medium-high in a 4-quart stovetop casserole or sauté pan. Add the chicken, skin side down, as many pieces as fit comfortably. Cook until lightly browned, season with salt and pepper and turn to brown other side. Remove to a platter when done and repeat with the remaining chicken.
- Step 2
Add the pearl onions to casserole and toss in fat until lightly browned. Remove to a dish. Reduce heat to low. Add the chopped onion, celery and garlic, cook until softened, and stir in the mushrooms. When they wilt, add the wine, bring to a simmer and season with salt, pepper and lemon juice. Return chicken to casserole with any accumulated juices, baste, cover and cook 30 minutes, basting a few more times. Remove the chicken to a platter.
- Step 3
Increase heat to medium-high and cook the sauce and mushrooms about 5 minutes, until sauce thickens slightly. Lower heat, add the pearl onions and butter. When butter melts, check seasonings, return chicken to casserole, baste and simmer a few minutes. Serve from casserole or transfer to a deep platter. Scatter the tarragon on top before serving.
Private Notes
Comments
I needed a great campfire recipe to feed a cabin-raising crew, and this was a wild success. If you have a spare autumn afternoon in the woods, a cast-iron Dutch oven, a stack of dry wood, and lots more wine than the recipe calls for, this dish is your go-to. You get accolades from the grateful framing crew, when all you really did was sip wine and tend a fire for 3 hrs. Win-win. Pairs well w/ arugula salad (use Sam Sifton's buttermilk blue cheese dressing) & Pierre Franey's sauteed potatoes.
Very good but definitely a weekend dish time-wise. Adding in the prep time brought it closer to 2 hours start to finish. We rendered some chopped pancetta initially to add depth (in lieu of the grapeseed oil) but left the cooked pancetta out of the dish
@Sacranento Fan - The purpose of browning the chicken is to create a fond - the carmelized brown bits and fat left in the pot when you brown chicken that is then deglazed with the wine and stock. The fond adds a tremendous amount of flavor.
This was quite good but the chicken got a little dry. To simplify things a bit I’d probably just use bone-in chicken thighs.Used frozen pearl onions because that’s all I could find and it was fine just allow a little extra time.
Carmalize the onions well! Brown the chicken skin side down well to crispy
I seriously doubt this is an 80 min recipe. 5 min to chop chicken, 10 min to blanch & prep onions, 7*2 min minimum to brown the chicken, plus a few extra mins for transferring. The time is unstated for cooking the onions, but we all know that never happens as quickly at home as a recipe says - I say 10 min minimum to cook the chopped onions, celery, the mushrooms, add wine & cook down before the chicken goes back. Few braises take just 30 min, Then five plus a few…. Not a recipe for weeknights.
Advertisement