Coq Au Vin Recipe - Chicken Braised in Red Wine (video)

[Saviolo]

This amazingly rich and delicious French dish actually has its roots in scarcity cooking, and using everything. Traditionally, this recipe would be made using the tough old rooster (the coq) which would need a long and slow cooking time in order to be tender and tasty. Unless you raise your own chickens, it's pretty much impossible to find rooster, though you might be able to find capon at some fancier grocery stores. We didn't bother with that, and just used bone-in skin-on thighs and legs, which turned out extremely well.

When you're cooking with wine, there is a temptation to use a lower-quality or cheaper wine in the dish, but I always recommend cooking with a wine you'd be happy to drink on its own. If you don't like how the wine tastes on its own, you're not likely to like how it tastes in the dish! There's also a certain charm to drinking the same wine you cooked with. The flavours complement each other very nicely.

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[flying_wahini]

1. When my husband (then boyfriend) and I were dating, this was the first meal I made for him.

The problem was the chicken was absolutely PURPLE. He had a good laugh and ate it anyway.
It tasted great.

[cilla4progress]

2. Yeah -

it doesn't entice me.

Is it supposed to turn purple?

[Saviolo]

4. Ours didn't turn purple, but the red wine does darken it.

If you start with white meat, it's definitely going to take on more colour. We used dark meat (legs and thighs), and while it definitely came out dark, the chicken did not come out wine-coloured at the end of it all. I'd be hesitant to use white meat because it's so easy to overcook. Even in a dish like this where you're cooking the chicken in a liquid, it can turn out dry if you overcook it.

[Saviolo]

3. Red wine can be like that!

Ours didn't turn purple, but it was definitely darker. We started out with dark meat anyway, though. I imagine if you start with a white meat like breast, it would be far more coloured by the wine and other ingredients.

[tishaLA]

5. The color is the exact reason I've never made it

And isn't it really meant for very large, older chickens that aren't generally available in our supermarkets?

[Warpy]

6. Well, most roosters were neither tough nor old

if my grandmother's flock is anything to go by. He was usually kept around long enough for at least one of the hens to lay fertilized eggs and go broody. which means good luck collecting them. That meant chicks were on the way, at least one of which would be a rooster, so there would be a month or so of peace and quiet after the last remaining rooster was dispatched, usually at under a year old. Louder, pain in the ass brothers had already gone into the pot on Sundays.

My grandmother made her own wine out of anything with a sugar content and it was wonderful. She'd had to do that during Prohibition, and was good enough at it to keep it up. It was kind of a waste to use it in cooking, but I never saw her picking up a bottle of cheap red rotgut for this recipe. One glug out of a bottle is all anything got. It was all it needed.

[PJMcK]

7. A fabulous dish

It's delicious and relatively easy to prepare.

My wife makes a version she calls "Rock 'n' Roll Chicken." We usually make that when we're too tired to cook up a storm!