This is a perfect dish for a cold winter day, the chicken is tender and the flavor just warms you up inside. Stewed chicken, which is braised chicken can be made in so many different ways, with tons of different flavor combinations. One of the things that I do differently when I make stew now is, instead of addding diced potatoes to stew in the pot with the chicken, I slice potatoes and fry them. Then use the fried potatoes as a topping to add more texture to the dish.
Chicken
My choice cut of chicken for this dish is of course, chicken thigh. Chicken thigh has enough fat, where even if overcooked it is still juicy. Chicken breast wouldgive you more of a bite and is healthier since it is more lean, you would just need to make sure you do not overcook it. Also if you want to go more rustic with this, you could use a whole chicken and use all of the pieces.
Vegetables
As for the vegetables I use yellow onion, bell peppers, potatoes and butter beans. The vegetables provide a large portion of the flavor in braised dishes, so the more the better.
Ingredients:
| Ingredient | Quantity |
| Chicken thigh, diced | 3 lb |
| Russet potato, or potato of choice, sliced 1/4 in thick | 1 large |
| Yellow onion, diced | 1 large |
| Green bell pepper, diced | 1 |
| Red bell pepper, diced | 1 |
| Canned butter beans, rinsed and drained | 15.5 oz |
| Chicken stock | 8 oz |
| Thyme | 6-8 sprigs |
| Salt | 2 tsp or TT |
| Black pepper | 1/2 tsp or TT |
| Garlic powder | 2 tsp |
| Olive oil | 1 tbsp |
| flour | 1 tbsp |
Instructions:
- add the 1 tbsp of olive oil to a pot on medium high heat, once the oil is hot, add the chicken and sear on all sides. Next add the onions and bell peppers, then saute until the onions start to turn translucent.
- Add the flour to the pot and mix to make a roux, then add the chicken stock, thyme, salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes, then add the butter beans and simmer for another 30 minutes.
- While the stew is simmering, get a pan and use enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the pan. Turn the heat to medium high and once it gets hot, add your potato slices and pan fry until golden and cooked, then transfer them to a paper towel to drain and sprinkle with salt and pepper. You can keep these in the oven at 170F after cooking to keep them warm.
- Once the stew is done, you can serve this with heaping scoop of rice pilaf. I made my rice pilaf in the picture above with onions and tarragon.
Brainstorm:
Like I said earlier, there are so many ways you can manipulate this dish. When I decided to use fried potato instead of stewing it with the rest of the ingredients that was me brainstorming. You could try frying okra and using that as a component, I think that would taste great. Another idea, you could switch the chicken out for turkey, quail or even beef. To make it richer you could add a splash of heavy cream near the end of the cooking.
Some other flavor profiles you could play with include using cumin + garlic + lemon or coconut milk + ginger or galangal + shiitake mushrooms, the options are endless. There is so much variety of vegetables, herbs, seasoings and cooking methods that can be used to transform “stewed chicken”.
Thank you all for reading, I hope you enjoyed. Please share this with your family and friends and look forward to my next food blog!
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