If you are looking for a rib-sticking cold-weather supper, look no further than this chicken
stew with biscuits on top. It's kinda halfway between chicken & dumplings and a pot pie,
and it comes courtesy of my dear friend Ben Harrison, who is very kindly using my biscuit
recipe from an earlier video.
Grate up a stick of frozen butter straight out of the freezer, using the big holes on
a box grater. Then quickly, you're gonna toss it into two-and-a-half cups of flour. The
traditional Southern biscuit flour would be White Lily self-rising flour. If you can't
get that, I'd do cake flour plus three teaspoons baking powder and one teaspoon salt. Ben lives
in California so I'm guessing that's what he did. You could totally use all-purpose
instead of cake flour — they just won't be as soft.
Chill that in the fridge while you start your stew.
Get yourself maybe 8 ounces of mushrooms — any mushrooms. Those look to be creminis. You
can see Ben trimming away the woody stems, and then just cutting them up into big, thick
slices. Mushrooms shrink a ton when you cook them, so always cut them bigger than you want
them.
Then you're looking to get maybe two cups of whatever cut-up aromatic vegetables you
want. Ben's got a couple carrots that he is notably not peeling because this dish is rustic
AF. Thickly-sliced quarters is what he's doing. Now he's gonna peel a few shallots. You could
totally use any form of of onion.
"I am ^$&%ing weeping after cutting up thosWell, t."
Aww, poor little baby. Why am I dunking my own friend? Two reasons: He's irritatingly
tall, unlike me, and unlike me he actually went to film school, which is why his footage
here looks irritatingly good compared to mine. Is that not the most California-looking light
you've ever seen?
Now he's cutting up a bulb of fennel. That's the celery-like vegetable that tastes of licorice,
but only mildly so. I freaking love fennel. Even if you don't like that flavor of anise,
you really should try fennel bulb. It cooks up really sweet.
Get yourself half a pound of bacon and cut it up into big ol' chunks. You can see Ben
there is using a thick-cut bacon. That's gonna get you really luscious, chewy chunks in the
end. Thin-sliced bacon would give you these disappointing little crumbles. Hell, use slab
bacon, if you can get it.
Put a big oven-safe pot on like medium-high heat. A dutch oven was born for a meal like
this. Throw your bacon in and get it frying. Get some color on it, and get most of the
fat melted out.
While it's going, prep your chicken — four chicken thighs.
"Poultry is much more expensive where I live."
He's got boneless, skinless, which saves you some effort. I you only ever cook with chicken
breasts, you've gotta give thighs a try in your stews — so much more flavorful, and
when they're slow-cooked, the texture is just unctuous. Ben is tossing them in flour, a
very old-school technique.
Out comes the bacon with a slotted spoon, so as to leave the fat behind. Then Ben is
gonna fry them thighs in that there bacon fat, which is one of my favorite sentences
I've said lately. That flour is helping him get some golden color on that meat. Later
it'll help the sauce adhere to the chicken pieces and it'll thicken the sauce a little
bit. Out it comes — that meat is nowhere near cooked yet but that's totally fine. He
was just browning the outside.
At this point, Ben pours off about half of the fat in that pan, because he is a nearly
seven-foot wee-little baby with delicate sensibilities. I'd leave it in, but if you don't want your
stew too greasy, dump out some of the fat. Vegetables go in, and they should really quickly
release enough water that you can use it to deglaze the pan before the stuff stuck to
the bottom starts to burn.
Mushrooms go in, and then Ben is scraping in the leaves from a few sprigs of fresh thyme,
but use whatever herbs you like, fresh or dried, doesn't matter. Bacon goes in, followed
by the chicken, and rather than dirty another cutting board, Ben is just using his kitchen
shears to snip the thighs into big bite-size pieces, right there in the pan. You could
cut them up normal-like before you put them in, or just let them fall apart naturally
as they cook, whatever you want to do.
Then comes one 12-ounce beer: lager, or anything else on the light side. I fear the proliferation
of very hoppy pale ales and such has resulted in some disappointed home cooks. They try
to stew with that stuff and it makes their dinner really bitter. Go with a lawnmower
beer, or if you don't want to cook with alcohol, might I suggest a lesser quantity of apple
juice. You don't want things too sweet — use apple juice cut with water. And even if you
use the beer, you're gonna need some water — enough to make sure everything is covered
in liquid.
Salt and pepper — be conservative with your seasoning because this is gonna reduce,
and you can always taste it and add more later. Get it hot, then take the heat down to a simmer
and let it keep going uncovered for 30 or 40 minutes until the sauce has reduced and
thickened a bit and the chicken is getting nice and soft, during which time you can preheat
your oven to 450 F and make your biscuits.
Butter and dry ingredients come out of the fridge, and in goes a cup of cold buttermilk.
Buttermilk gives them an insane yogurty twang. In fact you could use plain yogurt loosened
up with some plain milk. Just barely bring everything together, then pour a ton of flour
on your table, dump everything out, gently mold everything into a blob and just roughly
roll it out to maybe an inch thick. Fold it over on itself once, quick roll. Fold it over
again — a little flour on top if it's starting to stick, roll it out to an inch, fold it
over again, and repeat one or two more times.
Rolling and folding with those little cold shreds of butter in there will give you a
flakey, layered texture. If you used warm butter, it would just melt the dough into
a homogenous mass. Get it rolled out to an inch thick the final time, and then cut your
biscuits. Ben is just using a metal one-cup measure. And try to leave as little in the
way of scraps as possible. You can gather up the scraps like that, roll them out again
and punch out a few more biscuits, but they won't have the same laminated texture. If
your stew isn't ready yet, get those biscuits in the fridge before the butter starts to
melts
You could taste your stew for seasoning now. You can see how it's looking reasonably thick
and glossy, but it shouldn't look too thick, because it's gonna cook some more. Float your
biscuits on top like beautiful little butter clouds, and speaking of butter, Ben's got
some that he's melted in a pan with pepper and herbs, and he's using that to brush the
biscuit tops. Nice move. That's gonna help the biscuits brown in the oven, which is where
the whole pot goes now, 450 for 20 or 25 minutes or until the biscuits look done. It's that
dry heat that makes this different from chicken & dumplings, which is usually done exclusively
on the stovetop and therefore you don't get that crispy caramelized top there. That is
an autumnal delight, right there.
Pour yourself another beer. That Drunk Shimoda pint glass is actually podcast merch — it's
an inside joke from The Greatest Generation and The Greatest Discovery, which are very
funny and shockingly popular podcasts where Ben and our mutual friend Adam Pranica irreverently
review various Star Trek shows. I actually wrote a lot of the music for those podcasts.
You should check them out — links are in the description.
You might also consider the podcast Friendly Fire, where Ben and Adam sit at the feet of
aging indie rock icon John Roderick and they all talk about war movies. I feel there'd
be a big overlap between people who'd like that podcast and people who'd like this stew.
Not sure why, but I'm pretty that's a true thing I just said. Thanks, Ben, for the recipe.
And stop being so tall.