Thing Twenty-Six: Braised Chicken

Last night, I did an experiment!

I bought some chicken thighs (skin on, bone in) from Whole Foods. I bought more than I ended up needing, because I thought I'd be bringing them to a potluck dinner, but that got canceled due to the host's illness. Anyway, I froze one package and cooked up two. Here's what I made.

1. Heat butter in the bottom of a Dutch oven.
2. Dredge chicken thighs in seasoned flour.
3. In batches, brown chicken on both sides. Watch how gorgeous and crispy and golden brown it gets! Plop it on a plate when it's brown.
4. Realize there's a lot more fat in that pot now that some of it's rendered out of the chicken skin. Pour off most of it, but leave just a little.
5. In that little bit of yummy buttery chicken fat, sauté up some shallots until the smell gets super amazing and the shallots are tender.
6. Deglaze the pot with some sherry. Pour in some chicken broth, and some honey.
7. Plop that chicken back in the pot and bring it to a boil.
8. When it boils, turn it down to a low simmer, and put the lid on it.
9. Wait.
10. When the chicken is cooked through and tender as fuck, take it out and put it on a plate covered in foil to keep warm.
11. If you have time, you can reduce the liquid in the pot to make it into a thicker sauce. If you don't, you can add a cornstarch slurry to thicken it. That's what I did.
12. Eat chicken with sauce.

Note: this goes really well with latkes made by your oyster of a fiancé, and with rapini cooked with plenty of garlic.