This Recipe Will 100% Make You Fall In Love With French Cooking

What's up, dude? My main objective and purpose for this YouTube channel is to turn you into an absolute machine in the kitchen. I want you to have recipes in your cooking arsenal that are so good that your grandma is asking you how you made them. Make this coq au vin one time, and I guarantee you will be making it for many, many happy years to come. Now let's go! So coq au vin literally means rooster with wine. So first you're gonna need a rooster, which you're not gonna be able to find, so just use chicken. And the cuts that you're typically gonna see used in this dish are legs and thigh. I got whole legs for mine and just cut that joint, but if you wanna just buy them separate, that's absolutely fine as well. And if you have the foresight, it can be a really great idea to take the wine that you're gonna use in this dish, which in this case is pinot noir, and just pour that over the chicken with the pearl onions and some fresh thyme. And now leave it in the fridge to marinate overnight. The next day, you wanna pull out your chicken, and we wanna dry it off really well. It's gonna be a little bit stained now by the wine. And while we're on the subject of wine, just buy a cheap bottle. You really don't need anything expensive when you're cooking like this. Love the way that looks, so cool. And we really, really wanna dry these up, so just leave these towels on, soak up that moisture. And now with your wine here, this is the wine we're gonna be cooking with for this recipe, so we're definitely not discarding it. Just run it through a strainer. Save the onions and the thyme, obviously we'll be using those as well. And with the wine here, I'm gonna set it on the stove, cook it down by about 50%, burn off that alcohol. I don't know why, but this wine smells so good right now, just reducing, and I don't even drink. So I'm gonna turn that off, it's reduced now, I'm just gonna set it aside. Chicken's nice and dry. Now we're gonna season it up. Salt, Sergeant Gilbert, or should I say Sergeant Gilbert? I don't know what his French name would be, something like that. Is Gilbert a French name? I once had a French friend named Gaspard. Gaspard, if you're out there, man, I miss you, buddy. I just flip those over, I'm doing the same thing on the other side. Typically in Côte d'Ivoire, you're gonna see lardons being used, but they are a little bit hard to find here in America. If you can find them, use those. The next best thing is just gonna be thick-cut bacon. And what you wanna do here is just slice it into these sort of lardon shapes, little strips of pork belly, something like this is just perfect. Now I'm gonna get that into a pan on medium heat, and we're gonna begin rendering out this bacon, getting it ready for the dish. That's all rendered off now, I'm just going to strain out this bacon. And I'm actually leaving the fat in the pan for now. I'm gonna definitely be eating five to seven to nine to 13 to 27 pieces of this bacon. Good luck not doing that. It's so good. Now we're gonna drop that chicken into the bacon fat, skin side down. And you may have to do two batches, I don't think it's gonna quite all fit, that's okay. Now I don't wanna overcrowd it, but also I've just decided I'm gonna make it fit. Just keep that heat high, it's gonna be fine. Pushing the limits, but that's okay. Once they're nice and brown, let's give them a flip. Smells so good. And just do the same thing on the other side. Now we're just gonna remove this chicken from the pan, set it over here with the bacon. At this point, I'll discard about 80% of that fat. Next, we're gonna slice up the mushrooms, I'm just using these regular old cremini or button mushrooms. And all I did was remove that little stem and then clean the tops. And what I'm gonna do with these is very simple, just quarter them. Like so, you could do slices if you want. I just like this shape for coq au vin. If there's a real big one like this, I might just do it in sixes like a little pizza. For these carrots, I'm gonna cut them into this sort of oblique shape. You see the angle we have there, we're just going straight across like that. And then you just turn and roll and make the same cut like that. Turn and roll, same cut. And all the way down until you get to the bottom. There you can make the angle a little heavier so they stay the same size. And what you're left with is this cool little shape that I quite like. In the same pan here, I'm gonna add a little bit of oil. Heat's on medium high. And a touch of butter. Maybe a little more. As the great Julia Childs once said, rub-a-dub-a-dub-a-dub-a-dub-a-dub. And now here we go, in with the mushrooms. Oh, splash, be careful. Maybe a little bit overcrowded, but hey, I'm gonna make it work. Keep that heat aggressive. I'll tell you what, I absolutely love mushrooms. And check this out. The largest living organism on Earth is a honey mushroom species in the Pacific Northwest, which spans about 5.5 kilometers or 2,334 acres. It's estimated to be over 2,000 years old. What are you doing? That was in my, no, no, guys, I'm checking my text. I wasn't, it's not the mushroom thing. Took about 10 minutes to brown up those mushrooms. I'm gonna add in the carrots now. And I'll just do the carrots in here for about three or four minutes. All right, let's get that stuff out. Try to leave most of the fat in the pan if you can. Little more oil going down, more butter going in, just a touch. And now we're going in with the onion. Oh yeah, that smells good. It's like all the best smells in here, bacon, onion, butter, man. Now, after about eight minutes, my onions are nice and brown, they smell delicious. I'm gonna pop them out, get them over here with the mushroom. Now, listen to my friends. I'm not gonna deglaze this pan. On one of my recent chicken tikka masala videos, people were going off in the comments about how I didn't deglaze the pan. If there's nice brown fond on the pan, that tastes delicious. By all means, deglaze it. But if it looks like this, don't deglaze it. That is not gonna be good, right? Look at it, it's burnt. Plus, most of the fond came off already when I cooked the mushrooms after the chicken and bacon. Into this new pan, I've got it just a touch under medium heat. I'm adding in unsalted butter. You may be wondering why I didn't just build it all in one pan like this. I'll tell you why. I never like searing stuff in these pots. I only use these for braising. When you try to sear something in here, it never gets a good sear, and then the sides of your pan just get totally black. Too black. And then you wash that off into your sauce, and it doesn't leave a nice flavor. I love these pots. They look beautiful. It's Le Creuset. It's great for braising, but not for searing meat. Butter's melted. I'm adding in the garlic right now. Just crushed garlic is all. Garlic's been cooking for about three minutes. It's nice and fragrant. I'm just adding in now the tomato paste. Little toothpaste tube of it. And now, as you may see me do here on this channel, I always toast off that tomato paste. Whenever you're working with it, it's always a good idea. It deepens the flavor. It removes that sort of tartness and acidity. So that's what we're doing now. Just about three minutes with that tomato paste. Now I'm adding in the flour. This is gonna be the thickener for our coq au vin. And sort of what we're building here, more or less, is like a tomato paste sort of garlic roux. And like with any good roux, you definitely wanna cook that flour out a little bit for at least five minutes to get rid of any raw kind of taste. Flour's cooked off. Now I'm starting to add the chicken stock, little by little. Don't wanna add too much at a time. And I really wanna work this in so I can get a nice, smooth sauce. And you'll see it seize up, thicken up, just like it is doing right now. Wow, that looks so good. And then we add more coq au vin, coq au vin. This is such a great recipe, whether you're new to cooking or you've been doing it for a long time. Real crowd pleaser. And add a little more. There's all our stock. And now I'm coming in hot with the wine. Don't forget the wine, kind of the name of the dish. Same deal, just work it in. Oh yeah, now I'm gonna bring this back to a simmer. Here we go. Look at this, I'm so excited. Let's start adding in all the chicken. And the chicken is gonna raise up the level of our braising liquid. In with all the vegetables. Oh, baby. Ooh, spread those out. Oh man, my mouth is just salivating right now. This looks so good. Fresh thyme going in, we'll pull that out later. And of course, the bacon and whatever drippings were on this tray from the chicken. God, oh! Now, I'm turning off the heat. If you want, you could probably do this on the stove, although I'm gonna put it in the oven, just set it and forget it. Well, not forget it, I'm gonna remember to pull it out after about 45 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. And if you know me, you know I love doing that little cracked lid so it can reduce a little bit, but still breathe. I feel like if I have a lid on it the whole time, it gets a little bit too hot. Don't wanna stress this chicken out. See you in a bit. Oui, oui. Was that good? Did that look good? Did it look good on camera? And while that cooks, I would like to make you aware of my ebook called Master in the Making with 55 of my personal favorite recipes over the last five years. And if you like this coq au vin, the bouffe bourguignon that is in that book is truly spectacular. It's one of my favorite recipes of all time. The link for that will be down in the description. Okay, my friends, here we go, 45 minutes later. Look at this. My God, I can't tell you how good this smells. For me, that sauce is just absolutely perfectly thick. I don't like my sauces too thick. If you want it thicker for some reason, add another tablespoon of flour, but for me, oh Lord. Oh, dude, it's so good. Now look, just as you would rest a steak after you cooked it, make sure you rest your braised meats, whether it be coq au vin or bouffe bourguignon or what have you. As it relaxes in there, it's gonna be so much more tender and juicy. And if you have the God-like patience to make this the day before you wanna use it, it is gonna be so fricking good. That is the absolute best. For now, I'm just gonna let this rest for about 20 minutes or so. If you're looking for ideas on what to serve the coq au vin with, you could do mashed potatoes, you could do rice, you could do polenta, you could do egg noodles or pasta, you could make dauphinois potatoes with these. That would be like the best one. You could also do green beans, Swiss chard, or cauliflower if you're looking for something a little healthier. Today, I just made some whipped Yukon gold mashed potatoes. I'll put a link at the end of this video if you wanna learn how to make those. All right, Marcus, let's give this thing a taste, dude. Marcus has never had coq au vin. Coq au vin. You may do the honors, sir. Ooh. These are my favorite kind of meat. I'm getting an onion. I'm so careful. That's gonna obliterate my mouth. Maybe give it a blow or two, man. Yeah. Wait, I'll let it drip. It's not that bad, it's not that bad. Oh my god. Yeah, I haven't even tried it yet. Dude, I'm so hungry. It's so good. Oh man, I'm getting onion. I'm sorry you guys have to watch us eat this. Oh yeah. Honestly, this might be so good if you lick your camera, you could taste it a little. Try it. Laptop or phone, give it a lick. Oh my god. All right. So the meat is really, really tender, but without falling off of the bone. Just make it, all right? Make it. Just make it, man. Thanks for hanging out with me today in my kitchen. I really had a great time with you, Kevin. If your name was Kevin, that would have been wild. Hope you had fun hanging out with me today in the kitchen, learning about this new dish. I always like to direct new people down to the description underneath this video if you wanna look at all the tools and equipment that I use here on this channel. There's a monster list down there and it is a great resource for you for stocking your own kitchen. And if you wanna keep learning today, here are two more comfort food recipes that are similar to Côte d'Ivoire that I know you're gonna love. Until next time, you know I love you and I'm out.