Citizens, few recipes are more quintessentially old-school French than coq au vin! Coq au vin is a dish of chicken braised with wine, lardons (batons of salt pork or slab bacon), mushrooms, and optionally garlic (TFD definitely prefers with!).
A red Burgundy wine is typically used, though many regions of France make variants using local varietals, such as coq au vin jaune (Jura), coq au Riesling (Alsace), coq au pourpre or coq au violet (Beaujolais nouveau), coq au Champagne, etc.
Various legends trace coq au vin to ancient Gaul and Julius Caesar, but the recipe was not documented until the early 20th century; it is generally accepted that it existed as a rustic dish long before that. A somewhat similar recipe, poulet au vin blanc, appeared in an 1864 cookbook.
Julia Child featured coq au vin in her breakthrough 1961 cookbook “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”, and she frequently prepared it on the PBS cooking show “The French Chef”. This exposure helped to increase the visibility and popularity of the dish in the United States, and coq au vin was seen as one of Child’s signature dishes.
Although the word “coq” in French means “rooster” or “cock”, and tough birds with lots of connective tissue benefit from braising, most modern coq au vin recipes call for capon or generic “chicken”.
Standard recipes call for red wine (often Burgundy) for braising, lardons (salt pork or bacon), button mushrooms, onions, often garlic, and sometimes brandy. Recipes with vin jaune may specify morels instead of white mushrooms.
The preparation is similar in many respects to beef bourguignon. The chicken is seasoned, sometimes floured, seared in fat and slowly simmered in wine until tender. The usual seasonings are salt, pepper, thyme, parsley and bay leaf, usually in the form of a bouquet garni. The juices are sometimes thickened either with a roux or by adding blood at the end.
Citizens, I’ve based my version of the recipe on the seminal version from perhaps the world’s finest Chef – Alain Ducasse. I have dared to tinker with his recipe, adding garlic, a bit of tomato paste, tweaking the seasonings, added some thickener to the sauce and specifying fresh porcini mushrooms.
Most heretically, I prefer a bit of tartness to my coq au vin and have added a bit of balsamic vinegar and pickled cocktail onions in place of fresh. I prefer these changes, but by all means, omit them if you want to make the classic version! ☺
Battle on – The Generalissimo
PrintThe Hirshon Coq au Vin
Ingredients
- The day before: marinade
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- 7 ounces (200 g) carrots
- 3 1/2 ounces (100 g) onions
- 3 1/2 ounces (100 g) shallots
- 2 cloves garlic
- 2 sprigs fresh thyme
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 celery stalk
- 5 parsley stems
- 2 bottles (1.5 l) generic red Burgundy wine
- 1 tsp black peppercorns
- freshly ground pepper
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- Chicken:
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- 1 5 1/2-6 1/2 pound (2.6-2.8-kg) chicken (ideally a rooster or a stewing chicken)
- 1 1/2 ounces (40 g) butter
- 1/4 cup (50 ml) cognac
- 3 tablespoons (40 ml) olive oil
- 1 tablespoon tomato paste (TFD addition)
- 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar (TFD addition – totally optional)
- fleur de sel
- freshly ground pepper
- brown chicken stock
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- Garnish:
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- 8 3/4 ounces (250 g) salt-cured pork belly (preferred) or slab bacon
- 1 1/2 tablespoons (20 ml) olive oil
- 8 3/4 ounces (250 g) porcini mushrooms
- 8 3/4 ounces (250 g) cocktail pearl onions in brine (TFD heresy here – use fresh peeled cocktail onions for the traditional version)
- 3 cloves garlic, minced (TFD addition)
- 3/4 ounce (20 g) butter
- 1 tsp sugar
- fleur de sel
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- For the thickener (TFD addition):
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- 2 tbsp plain flour
- 1 1/2 tsp olive oil
- 1 tsp softened butter
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- Base needed : Brown Chicken Stock
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- 2 onions
- 1 bouquet garni
- 1.5 l white chicken stock
- 50 ml grapeseed oil
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- Decoration (TFD addition):
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- 1/2 bunch flat leaf parsley, chopped
Instructions
- The day before: marinade
- Dress the chicken and cut into 16 pieces. Peel, wash, and finely slice the carrots. Peel and finely slice the onions and shallots. Tie the parsley stems together with the thyme, bay leaf, and celery to make a bouquet garni. Put all of the chicken pieces into a stainless steel container and evenly distribute all of the sliced vegetables for the marinade. Cover the chicken with wine. Add the crushed unpeeled garlic cloves, bouquet garni, and peppercorns. Cover with plastic wrap and marinate for 24 hours in the refrigerator.
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- Base needed : Brown Chicken Stock
- Peel and finely slice the onions. Break up the chicken carcass and chop the giblets. Brown in a cast iron pan with 50 ml of oil. Add the onions and bouquet garni. Sweat for 5 minutes. Remove any fat from the pan. Deglaze with 30 ml of white chicken stock. Reduce. Add enough white stock to cover the contents of the pan. Bring to a boil. Remove any fat and skim off any impurities. Simmer for 2 hours. Skim regularly. Strain the stock through a conical strainer without pressing. Refrigerate.
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- Step 1: Chicken
- The next day, strain the marinade and separate the liquid, the aromatics and the chicken. Carefully pat dry the chicken pieces and aromatics from the marinade. Heat the olive oil in a cast iron pan. Brown the chicken pieces, skin-side down first, until nicely browned, about 10 minutes. Transfer to a tray. Add the butter to the pan, then add the vegetables and aromatics from the marinade. Sweat for 3 minutes. Meanwhile, bring the wine from the marinade to a boil. When the aromatics are cooked, return the chicken to the pan, placing on top of the aromatics.
- Pour the Cognac over the top and flambé. Add the boiling marinade. Reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Add enough brown chicken stock to cover the contents of the pan plus the tomato paste and balsamic (if using). Bring to a boil. Cover and cook in the oven at 180 C/350 F for 2 hours. Pay close attention to the chicken while it cooks, ensuring that it cooks slowly and evenly.
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- Step 2: Garnish
- Cut the salt-cured pork belly into lardons. Blanch the lardons in boiling water for 1 minute, then drain them on paper towels. Heat some olive oil in a pan, and add the lardons to brown them for 3-4 minutes. Set them aside to drain on paper towels. Sauté the garlic and mushrooms in the same pan used for the lardons. Season with salt and sauté for 5 minutes.
- Meanwhile, prepare the pearl onions. Add the butter and the sugar to a pan. Add the pearl onions and a touch of water, and cover with some parchment paper. Glaze until dark brown, about 10 minutes. When cooked, transfer the sautéed mushrooms to the tray with the lardons. Remove the parchment paper from the onions. Stir them with the caramel that has formed. Turn off the heat.
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- Step 3: Finishing and plating
- After 2 hours, the chicken is cooked. Separate the chicken from the sauce, strain the sauce, and place it in the pan to reduce.
- To make the thickener, mix the flour, olive oil and butter in a small bowl using the back of a teaspoon. Bring the wine mixture to a gentle boil, then gradually drop in small pieces of the thickener, whisking each piece in using a wire whisk. Simmer for 1-2 mins. You can also add chicken blood at this point to thicken the sauce.
- Transfer the chicken to a rondeau pan and check that it is properly cooked. The flesh should be tender. Add the lardons, mushrooms, garlic and onions to the chicken and heat. Add the reduced sauce to coat the ingredients. Allow to simmer for 10 minutes. Serve the coq au vin in small cast iron pots or straight on warmed plates, topped with the remaining sauce and the chopped parsley.
Are you going to make this?
Indeed!