There comes a point in the year when salad starts to feel less like dinner and more like an administrative error.
The evenings draw in, the jumpers come out and what you really want is something bubbling away in a pot, preferably involving meat, wine and enough sauce to justify an indecent amount of mashed potato.
Enter Coq au Vin.
It sounds fancy. Very French. Possibly requiring a copper pan and a farmhouse in Burgundy. In reality, it’s beautifully simple: chicken slowly cooked in red wine with bacon, mushrooms, onions and herbs.
And it doesn’t need to cost a fortune.
THE THIGHS HAVE IT
We’re using chicken thighs and drumsticks because dark meat is made for slow cooking. It has bags of flavour, stays juicy and represents cracking value.
Cheap cuts. Expensive-tasting dinner.
Our free-range chicken comes from Warwickshire, where the birds are slow-grown in smaller groups with access to grassy areas and a diet supplemented with whole maize, oats and apples.
Good chicken doesn’t need much messing about with.
Although drowning it in red wine certainly helps.
COQ AU VIN
Serves 4 | Prep: 20 minutes | Cooking: around 1 hour 30 minutes
Ingredients
4 Turner & George chicken oyster thighs, skin on and bone in
4 Turner & George chicken drumsticks
150g Waberthwaite Pancetta
200g chestnut mushrooms, halved
150g pearl onions or small shallots, peeled
2 carrots, cut into chunky slices
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 tbsp plain flour
1 tbsp tomato purée
500ml dry red wine
300ml chicken stock
2 bay leaves
4 sprigs fresh thyme
25g butter
1 tbsp vegetable or rapeseed oil
Small handful flat-leaf parsley, chopped
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Method
Take the chicken out of the fridge around 30 minutes before cooking and season generously with salt and pepper. Heat the oil in a large casserole over a medium-high heat, add the chicken skin-side down and cook for 4–5 minutes until properly golden. Turn, brown the other side, then remove and set aside.
Add the bacon lardons to the same pan and fry until golden and beginning to crisp. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside with the chicken.
Turn the heat down slightly, add the carrots and cook for around 5 minutes. Add the garlic and tomato purée and cook for another minute before sprinkling over the flour and stirring everything together.
Gradually pour in the red wine, scraping all those lovely sticky bits from the bottom of the casserole as you go. Bring to a simmer and cook for around 10 minutes to reduce slightly.
Pour in the chicken stock and add the thyme and bay leaves, then return the chicken and bacon to the casserole. Bring everything gently back to a simmer, cover and cook over a low heat for around 45 minutes. Alternatively, put the casserole into a 160°C fan oven and let it get on with things.
Meanwhile, melt the butter in a frying pan and cook the pearl onions for 5–6 minutes until they begin to colour. Add the mushrooms, turn up the heat and fry until beautifully golden.
Add the mushrooms and onions to the casserole, leave the lid off and cook for another 20–25 minutes until the chicken is tender and the sauce has reduced to something rich, dark and glossy.
Remove the thyme stalks and bay leaves, check the seasoning and finish with a generous handful of chopped parsley.
If the sauce is still looking a little thin, take the chicken out, keep it warm and boil the sauce for another 5–10 minutes until it coats the back of a spoon.
Serve with proper buttery mash and some crusty bread for dealing with the sauce. No tweezers. No architectural plating. Just stick the casserole in the middle of the table and get stuck in.
DON’T WASTE THE GOOD WINE
Pinot Noir is the classic choice, but any decent, lighter dry red will work beautifully. The rule is simple: don’t cook with anything you wouldn’t happily drink.
The second rule is even more important.
Don’t put the whole bottle in.
Chef needs refreshments.
And if you can make your Coq au Vin the day before, even better. Cool it, stick it in the fridge and gently reheat the following day. Like most great braises, it improves considerably after spending a night contemplating its life choices.
Because good eating isn’t always about buying the most expensive cut on the counter. Sometimes it’s simply good chicken, humble ingredients, half a bottle of red and a little bit of time.
Simple. Affordable. Bloody lovely.
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