welcome friends welcome back to the
kitchen it is a little bit cold and
snowy outside so i thought i would do
sort of a
warming chicken stew so i've got a big
stockpot on the stovetop and to that i'm
going to add a big lump of butter
and i'll just get that melted into the
bottom once that butter has melted down
i have
some chicken thighs here that i have
deboned de-skinned and
chopped up into sort of bite-sized
pieces and i want to brown the chicken
in that butter and i'm just going to do
it a few at a time
because i don't want to cool the pot too
much now i don't want to overstate the
amount of browning you should expect on
the chicken
not a whole lot we're not looking to
cook it all the way through either
because we will cook it later in the
stew
you're really just looking to get some
brown on the bottom of the pot
and you have to be careful because we're
frying this in butter and you
don't want to burn that butter you don't
want to get it to the point where the
butter becomes bitter
because you've burnt it so once i get
the chicken
out of the pot i'm going to put in some
diced onion
and we just want to bring this onion to
the point where it's translucent
don't want to get too much color on it
at all
so stir that around in the butter
and then i'm also going to squeeze in
some garlic
you can mince the garlic if you want to
i kind of like
this garlic squisher
so we give that a stir around i've got
some flour
i want to chip in three four tablespoons
of flour
and cook that in with the onions and the
butter
now people always freak out about how
long you're supposed to fry the flour
in the pan before you add any other
ingredients because you don't want the
raw
flour taste it doesn't take that long at
all and especially since this is a soup
it's going to simmer for quite some time
so this is fine to move right on to the
next step
we're looking for some of the thickening
power the longer you fry it the less
thickening power you have
the shorter you fry it the more
thickening power you have there's this
whole
sliding scale on flavor and so on and so
forth
find one that works for you find one
that gives you the thickening you want
the flavor you want etc etc etc don't
worry about the raw
flour taste
because you probably eat raw cookie
dough and you never complain about the
raw flour taste in the raw cookie dough
or lick the beaters after you've made a
cake
so next into the pot we have thyme
rosemary
summer savory
a couple of bay leaves and some sage
just give that a bit of a stir and then
i'm going to dump in the vegetables
right away so i have
celery mushrooms and carrots in they go
and then chicken stock and this is
homemade chicken stock
now i'm going to bring this up to a
simmer i'm going to put the chicken
back in and i'm going to put a lid on
this
sort of loosely and let it simmer for
25 or 30 minutes before we move on to
the next
step yeah no don't forget to season with
salt and
pepper
now we let it simmer okay we are in the
home stretch with this stew
or soup um whatever you want to call it
i mean you can thicken this
as thick as you want so at this point
you need to decide if
it's thick enough or not and if you want
it thicker
a bermanier would bring this together
and thicken it
if you want it a little bit thinner you
could add a little bit more chicken
stock
i'm going to add some cream and if you
don't want to add cream you could add
milk
and that's going to bring another layer
of flavor and sort of unctuousness
to this stew but first i'm going to put
in the frozen vegetables
um and you could use any frozen
vegetables that you want i've got
edamame
because i think edamame go really well
in a super stew
i have green peas because i love green
peas and i have some
corn you could put in green beans
broccoli cauliflower
you could put in some diced up potatoes
any veg that you want so just stir those
in
they don't really need to be cooked they
just need to be heated through
and i'm going to add somewhere between
half and
one whole cup of cream and this is heavy
cream 35
that looks pretty good
now before you serve it of course taste
it and check
for salt and pepper and then season it
accordingly but i think we're ready to
go
in that case i'm right on time hey jules
get a spoon
hey prince so chicken soupy stew
stewie soup um depending on how thick
you want to make it it could go either
way
it's got lots of good stuff in it it
does have lots of good stuff in it i'm
really looking forward to this
this is one of one of those things my
grandmother would uh make tea biscuits
and drop them on top and cook them up
kind of like a like a drop biscuit or a
and then they would cook and they'd be
soggy on the bottom that would be really
good and they've soaked up all these
flavors
i do really like that yes i do i do too
and yet
i never think to do it whenever you're
done till you're sitting you're eating
and then it's like it's too late but
granny always remembered to do it
wow that's because she was really great
okay these are great
so this is um this is a great base to
start
a chicken stew or soup and of course you
can change the vegetables
potatoes you can put in you can put in
broccoli cauliflower any of those things
that you like
leave out the ones you don't like leave
out the ones you don't like and so i put
summer savory in that and i understand
that summer savory isn't
something that people can get everywhere
so leave it out
don't worry about what you would
substitute for summer savory just
you know leave it out thanks for
stopping by
see you again soon
you