CHICKEN STEWS

CHICKEN STEW IS A BIT HARD TO DEFINE. Say beef stew and most everyone can imagine large, boneless chunks of browned beef floating in a rich, dark sauce along with some vegetables. But what exactly is chicken stew? Is it a cut-up chicken that is browned and then braised? Is it a cut-up chicken that is stewed (to make homemade broth) and then cooled in order to tear the meat from the bones? Is it boneless breasts or thighs cut into chunks and browned and stewed like beef?

We started with a whole chicken that was cut up, browned, and then simmered in water to make stock. The liquid was strained and the meat was removed from the breasts, legs, and thighs. Like meat stew, this preparation produced a stew without bones, and the homemade stock was a nice bonus. But the dish required a lot of effort (pulling the meat off each piece is very tedious) and the results were good but not great.

Our next thought was to follow our master recipe for meat stew but use a cut-up chicken instead of cubes of boneless beef, lamb, or pork. We browned the chicken parts, removed them from the pot, sautéed some aromatic vegetables, deglazed the pot with some wine, added stock, slow-cooking vegetables, and the chicken, and simmered until everything was tender. We encountered several problems with this method. The skin is nice and crisp after browning but becomes flabby and not very appealing after stewing in liquid for the necessary half hour or so. In addition, the wings are very unappetizing—they contain mostly inedible skin and very little meat. Also, the breast pieces were way too large to fit into a bowl (each piece would have to be cut in half crosswise) and they had dried out during the stewing process.

We tried this recipe again using just breasts and legs. We cut the split breasts in half, browned all the parts, pulled off the skin, and then added the legs to the stew followed by the breasts. Although the breasts were less dry and stringy, we felt that the dark meat pieces, with their extra fat and connective tissue, were better suited to stewing. They had much more flavor and their texture was more appealing. In addition, our tasters preferred the meatier thighs to the drumsticks, which tend to have more bone. The thighs are also easier to eat than the drumsticks, with the meat easily separating from the bones. We decided to abandon the breasts and drumsticks and concentrate on a stew made with thighs only.

This last test had revealed something interesting about the thighs. Removing the skin after the parts were browned was a must. The stew liquid was much less fatty, and since the skin was very soft and flabby and not really edible, there seemed little reason to serve it to people. We wondered if we should just start with boneless, skinless thighs—it certainly would be easier to eat a stew without bones. Unfortunately, when we browned boneless, skinless thighs, the outer layer of meat became tough and dry. Also, the skinless thighs tended to stick to the pan, even when we added quite a bit of oil. The skin acts as a cushion between the meat and pan.

We had decided on the style of chicken stew and for the most part liked the master recipe for meat stew adapted to chicken. But we found that we could not simply take the meat stew recipe wholesale and just add chicken instead of beef, lamb, or pork.

First of all, meat stews often taste best with red wine. Chicken generally matches up better with white wine. Also, because chicken requires less cooking time, we found that a stew made with one cup of wine and two cups of stock (as suggested in our meat stew recipes) was too alcoholic. Cutting the wine back to half a cup and increasing the stock by a half a cup keeps the stew from being too boozy. We also found that chicken's milder flavor calls for less aggressive seasoning. Therefore, we used one less bay leaf and half as much thyme as in our meat stew recipe.

Like meat stew, chicken stew responds best to subboiling temperatures, which are easier to maintain in a low oven. However, when we put the chicken in a 250-degree oven it took almost the entire cooking time for the liquid to come up to temperature. We raised the oven temperature to 300 degrees and found that the stew was ready 30 minutes after the chicken was added to the liquid. Although this higher temperature would eventually cause the stew temperature to rise to the boiling point, we found that the temperature was just about 200 degrees when the chicken was done.

Because chicken requires so much less time to cook than meat, vegetables are added before the chicken, not after. For instance, the carrots and potatoes get a 10-minute head start on the chicken so that they will be tender by the time the chicken is cooked through.