welcome friends welcome back to the
kitchen welcome back to sunday morning
in the old cookbook show today we're
going to do another recipe out of your
1939 cookbook
tested recipes furnished by elegant news
readers
we've done another recipe out of this
book and it's a it's a community
cookbook that has a lot of really good
recipes in it i really like this little
cookbook i like that
many of the recipes have two or three
different recipes for the same thing
from different families so you get an
idea a snapshot of how different people
made the same thing
and today we're going to do something
called smothered chicken
and you'll notice on the countertop i
have chicken water and butter
and a little bit of salt
that's it
there will be flour later
and maybe some milk
but it is one of those recipes that if
it works out
i think this is an incredible method
to have in your arsenal for that
that weeknight meal when you come home
in a hurry and you're all harried and
you don't know what you're going to eat
but chicken was on sale at the grocery
store what am i going to do how am i
going to do it how am i going to do it
quickly so
in that vein chicken was on sale at the
grocery store today leg quarters so i
got leg quarters instead of buying a
whole chicken and cutting it up and so
i'm going to put that in the bottom of
this pan
this brazer that i have use it all the
time good heavy bottom pan with a heavy
fitting lid because i think that's a key
to this recipe
next is
half a cup of water
and half a cup of butter
toss that butter in there
and i've put the chicken skin side down
i don't know if that's correct or not
the recipe doesn't say
next i'm going to come in with a
sprinkle of salt and that is the only
seasoning this recipe calls for now i'm
supposed to cover
closely which means a tight tight
fitting lid
and i'm supposed to cook that with the
lid on until the water boils dry
seems pretty simple pretty
straightforward a couple more
instructions after that but we're going
to cook this now until the water boils
dry
here we go so the water
has boiled off
and the chicken is pretty much i would
say 100 cooked at this point it is
cooked
to the point where it is falling apart
so i'm supposed to flip it over and
brown both sides
uh it's not going to take much to brown
the bottom side most of the skin has
pulled off at this point there is a lot
of fat in the bottom of the pan
i kind of expected that i mean we did
put in a half cup of butter
and then whatever fat came out of the
chicken at the same time so
it's not pretty
not pretty at all and really oily
so i'm going to pull the chicken out at
this point i think it's i think it's
done i'm going to pull it out i'm
probably going to remove
quite a bit of the fat that's at the
bottom of the pan
the next direction is to put in one
tablespoon of flour and a cup of milk in
order to
create the sauce or the gravy
i'm going to say that
the amount of fat that's in here
a
tablespoon of butter just isn't going to
cut it so
let's pull out some of that fat
okay
okay so
tablespoon flour i've still got the heat
on in goes the flour and i've got a
wooden spoon or spatula
and
i'm gonna mix
the flour into the fat i'm supposed to
cook it until the flour starts to brown
and i'm also going to pull up
the fond that's on the bottom of this
pan the fond is absolutely amazing
all that brown goodness
flavor in the bottom of the pan
i'll be able to pull up more of it when
i put the milk in
now i'm going to pour in the milk
and we'll stir this up to make a really
nice sauce
the gravy looks amazing now the
instruction is that i'm supposed to pour
the gravy over the chicken stick it in
the oven for a couple of minutes
um
i think what i'm actually going to do is
stick the chicken back in this pan and
put this pan in the oven for a few
minutes the chicken's cooked there's no
there's no way around it the chicken is
fully cooked it's cooked off the bone at
this point
i think you're just trying to get some
of the sauce on top and
keep it warm
until your family arrives for supper so
let me do that
okay
let's take a look
the big reveal hey friends
oh that's nice and warm
smothered chicken
let's get um
it smells pretty good yeah i
i i'm trying to figure out what you got
in there other than the chicken
smothered in what i guess is my question
smothered in what um not much not much
so it's
gonna make it yep
it's it's just
leg quarters
that you braise in a mixture of butter
and
water oh
butter
in the pan until the water evaporates
and then you fry the chicken in the in
the butter a lot of butter
take the chicken out
and and essentially make a roux and a
sauce with
some flour and milk
there's only salt
okay
so that's actually
surprisingly good lovely yes yes i was
afraid of butter like butter
i was gonna jump in with all kinds of
things that you could do
to
ramp this up i think pepper would help
pepper would help but that's a habit
right we're accustomed to salt and
pepper together yes and so
definitely adding pepper
it's got an interesting texture on on
the outside
as a method this really works
and it's not
it is a method that if i look back
through some of the french cookbooks
from the 17 1800s that we have
this idea of starting chicken slowly in
a pan with a little bit of water and
butter and then cooking it that way
is something that that shows up in those
earlier recipe books
you could take this in so many different
directions or you could just eat it
plain like this because it's
really good it would be interesting
though if there are other recipes like
this yeah like with with this style so i
would method i should say as i was
making it i'm thinking i take this
method
and instead of water in the first brace
cut back on the butter instead of half a
cup of butter maybe a quarter cup of
butter would be enough what and instead
of water you could use beer or wine yeah
or or a fruit juice
and that fruit juice would bring a
little bit more and then add in some
chip
little onions
to give a little bit of flavor some
pepper some paprika whatever that's got
a whole plan and you know and so you
take this basic method of doing this and
then you make the sauce at the end but
you take this basic method and you can
start to build a whole bunch of
different flavors on this base
but no
this actually tastes really good
and it's simple it's easy it's a
weeknight meal
throw some oven chips in the oven
microwave some some corn and some peas
and you've got a really
decent meal for not a lot of money see
you he's surprised i am surprised i am
surprised and i'm really pleased with
this because that's something that um
so many people could
do
on a tuesday night there you go thanks
for stopping by see you again soon
you