I decided I wanted to try to cook Chicken Cacciatore tonight after shopping and seeing that chicken thighs were on sale. Thats what I get for shopping hungry. Anyway, I had a general idea of what Cacciatore was, but I'd never actually cooked it before, so I looked online to find a recipe as a bit of a guideline. I found one on the Food Network site, and with the danger of losing any interest people might have in me, here is the link: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/chicken-cacciatore-recipe/index.html It is literally the first thing that pops up if you type “Chicken Cacciatore” into google.
Anyway, so from the recipe I learned that you basically need to fry/brown chicken, and then simmer in it a sauce for a while, then serve it over pasta. Easy right?
So here's what you are going to need.
Chicken Thighs. About a package should be fine. I used 6, a few were pretty big, and a few were small, so just use what you got.
Tomatoes-2 cans. (14oz) I used diced tomatoes, but you could use whole ones too if you wanted. Just make sure you have enough.
1 med/large onion, yellow
Garlic-A whole ton. I loves me some Garlic.
Olive Oil
Flour
Pasta
Chicken Broth
This is all I used, but this recipe is pretty versatile, you can throw in other veggies if you have them or want to. Mushrooms if you are so inclined (I'm not), Bell Peppers, Squash/zucchini could be fun, just whatever you have around/looks good at the store.
Anyway, what you are basically going to do is dredge the chicken in flour, then fry it in the pan. Take it out of the pan, throw in everything else, wait, then re-add the chicken and cook.
First, take a lesson from me, skin the chicken. You might be saying now “But Stefan, chicken skin is delicious, and I want to keep it!” To that I say, “Well you are weird, skin is gross... Also it makes it harder to cook the chicken. So get rid of it!” (I made the mistake of leaving it on, and I had to re-cook some of the chicken after everything else was done.)
Now, most recipes would have you dredge (fancy cooking word for coat) the chicken in flour. But to that I say, “Boring!” So I spiced up the flour first. I added Onion Powder, Basil, Oregano, Salt, Pepper and Rosemary to the flour, mixed it up, and coated the chicken with it. I like spices. They make food taste good. You should like spices too! I just put the flour on a plate, mixed in the spices and coated the chicken. This kept me from having too much excess flour at the end, because I didn't need to put too much in the plate.
Then I added the olive oil to my pan, a large saute-pan. Don't use a frying pan! You are going to need something with high sides, because you going to be adding a bunch of liquid to this.
When the olive oil is nice a hot. (Quick tip-you can tell when its hot enough when its viscosity goes down. The faster you can make it run around the pan, the hotter it is. Try it sometime! Put room-temp. Olive oil in a pan, then tilt the pan. Then heat up the pan and tilt the oil around. Its a good indicator) Put the chicken in the pan ex-skin side down. You want to just brown both sides a bit. This shouldn't take more than 5 or so minutes, depending on your stove.
When the chicken is all nice and brown, remove it, and put it on a nice CLEAN plate (Raw chicken=salmonella and that=bad so get a new plate!) Leave all of the delicious chicken-y juices in the pan. Mmm, chicken-y oil juices!
Your kitchen should smell great at this point, and your roommates should start asking you whats for dinner. Now depending on how nice you are, you could tell them, or you could tell them to go to hell!
Now add your garlic and onion to this. I cut my onion into nice big pieces, but if you arn't a fan of big pieces of onions, 1) Shame on you, and 2) cut the onion smaller! Its really up to you.
Cook that in here a bit, and add any more veggies you might want to add.
Then throw your tomatoes and about 1/2-2/3 of a cup of chicken broth to this. You can just eyeball it.
Also, if you have some wine laying around, you can add that to the mix too. Red or white, doesn't really matter, but I like red. Spice this! Use some of the same spices from your flour mix. I also like to add some cracked red pepper, but I'm just adventurous like that.
Let this cook for a few minutes and throw the chicken into the mix. Make sure you put it in ex-skin side down. Thats where all the meat is, and you don't want to waste heat cooking the bones and stuff. ( I made this mistake.) You can flip the chicken a bit past half-way through too to make sure you are getting an even cook.
You are going to want to let this simmer for 20-30 minutes. Simmer means a bit of bubbling, but not a whole rolling boil. Thats no good. Simmering is the name of the game. The sauce should simmer down a bit. This is good, intensifying flavors and all fo that.
Maybe 10 minutes into this, you can start your pasta, I used some nice Bow-ties, but really any pasta will work well. Pick something you like!
Then after the 20 or so minutes, check it to make sure its done. Cut open one of the thighs. You want NO pink. Just fully cooked delicious chicken.
If your chicken and pasta is done, then so are you! Just put the chicken and sauce over a bed of pasta, add some Parmesan if you so desire and eat!
Its easy and tasty!
I had this mean with a Black Chocolate Stout from Brookline Brewery.
http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/45/680/
This went really well, as its a very dark, almost bitter stout, with a big bittersweet chocolate taste that went really well with the dark flavors of the Cacciatore.
So serve this with a big dark beer, on a chilly fall day like today if you are on the East Coast with me, or just imagine a chilly day if you are on the west coast (While you are at it, pity me... its cold....)
So yea thats it! Let me know how it turned out if you try this! Let me know if anything is unclear, I'll help you out!
Here's a picture of my finished product!
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