Recipe Review: Chicken With Dark Beer (Cooking Light)

My husband is what you might call a "beer enthusiast". He's always scheming to cook with and drink as much beer as possible, especially on a hot summer day (which last weekend felt like, thanks Florida!). So when we ran across this in Cooking Light: Best One-Dish Meals, we knew we had to try it.

(Yummmm. Source)

Doesn't that look delicious? And a lightened-up meal that includes beer and mountains of veggies - Perfect for continuing to eat healthy while still getting the flavors we love.

 

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt 
  
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 
  
• 2 bone-in chicken breast halves, skinned
  
• 2 bone-in chicken thighs, skinned
• 2 chicken drumsticks, skinned 
  
• 2 tablespoons butter
  
• 1 tablespoon canola oil
  
• 3 tablespoons dry gin
• 3/4 cup chopped celery
  
• 3/4 cup chopped peeled carrot
  
• 1/2 cup chopped shallots (about 3 medium)
• 3 juniper berries, crushed
• 1 (8-ounce) package mushrooms, halved
  
• 3 sprigs fresh thyme
• 3 sprigs fresh flat-leaf parsley
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 cup dark beer 
  
• 1/4 cup whole-milk Greek-style yogurt 
  
• 2 teaspoons white wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

 

Preparation: 

Combine first 3 ingredients; sprinkle evenly over both sides of chicken. Heat butter and oil in a large deep skillet over medium-high heat. Add chicken to pan; sauté 5 minutes on each side or until browned. Remove pan from heat. Pour gin into one side of pan; return pan to heat. Ignite gin with a long match; let flames die down. Remove chicken from pan; keep warm.

Add celery, carrot, shallots, and juniper berries to pan; sauté 5 minutes or until vegetables are tender, stirring occasionally. Add mushrooms. Place thyme, parsley, and bay leaf on a double layer of cheesecloth. Gather edges of cheesecloth together; tie securely. Add cheesecloth bag to pan. Return chicken to pan, nestling into vegetable mixture. Stir in beer; bring to a simmer. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 45 minutes or until a thermometer inserted in the meaty parts of chicken registers 160°. (Breasts may cook more quickly. Check them after 35 minutes, and remove them when they're done; keep warm.)

Discard cheesecloth bag. Remove chicken from pan; keep warm. Place pan over medium heat; stir in yogurt. Cook 1 minute or until thoroughly heated (do not boil, as the yogurt may curdle). Remove from heat; stir in vinegar. Taste and adjust seasoning, if desired. Place 1 chicken breast half or 1 drumstick and 1 thigh on each of 4 plates; top each serving with about 3/4 cup sauce and vegetable 
mixture. Sprinkle with chopped parsley.


Whew. That's a lot of ingredients and steps, isn't it? There's a couple of changes to chat about.

First: Who has a cheesecloth? Anyone? I've been cooking like a madwoman for six years and I've never bought one. Publix, Walmart, and Target all disappointed in this search - the poor employees probably thought I was searching for a non-existent item. So to Google I went, and it turns out, you can just use any material you have on hand that allows the herbs to soak through without getting the leaves all in your dish. Suggestions included linen, clean pillowcases, and pantyhose (my personal favorite, and the one I went with).

Secondly: If you've never lit liquor on fire, be prepared. I thought it would be a cute flame, like when you light white wine for shrimp scampi. It burns a couple inches up from the pan, then it goes out. Easy peasy. Lighting 3 oz of gin on fire was NOT like that. It required moving things away from the stovetop, turning on the hood, and ignoring a huge WHOOSH that temporarily convinced me that the house was on fire. I didn't even have time to take a picture. Turns out, the house wasn't on fire, and it makes the dish so good - totally worth the prep. 

(Essentially what this looked like. Hide yo kids, hide yo meltable Solo cups. Source)

Other changes included:
Whole wheat flour subbed for all-purpose flour
Two chicken breasts subbed for the whole chicken parts
Leaving out the celery and juniper berries completely. Celery is meh for me, and the juniper berries were difficult to locate.


Successes:
- Even with the chicken breasts being used instead of dark meat, it turned out juicy and tender.
- The vegetables are SO good - I don't typically love carrots, but they are simmered so nicely with the beer and have a great flavor. The mushrooms and shallots also pick up a nice taste without becoming rubbery.
- The beer tastes great! We used Honey Brown lager - (Yum) - and it turned out well. Obviously, the alcohol cooks out, so you'll want one with a rich full taste that you like even if you don't catch a buzz :).
- This will incorporate nicely with any side you make - it's recommended to eat with potatoes, but we put it over sauteed broccoli and it was delicious. Next time I'll add French bread to sop up some of the sauce.

Failures:
- Time involved. This is another recipe that takes more than an hour, and it's hard to jump on that bandwagon when you're working all day and coming home hungry. There's also not a really solid point to stop cooking and refrigerate if you want to prep ahead, although you can pre-chop the veggies.
- Some of the ingredients are a bit abnormal. Juniper berries, for example, or a cheesecloth. With the cloth sub and leaving out the berries, it's still good, but it's not really user-friendly for the average working chef. Thankfully the liquor store will sell you a 3 oz bottle of gin if you're not interested in buying a whole bottle of essence of evergreen.
- The sauce left a little to be desired - you can see in the stock photo that it's a thin brown sauce. We found it needed to be salted as well as have some other basic spices included (like garlic and onion powder, and a little red pepper), to make it not bland. Next time we'll add a thickener to make it more of a hearty sauce and not so much a broth.
- Reheatability isn't fantastic - definitely better heated up in an oven or on the stove, rather than a microwave.


BullsBistro Rating: B-
This is good and we will make it again, but maybe next time with a sauce thickener and some stronger flavors (roasted garlic, and maybe add some slow roasted grape tomatoes...there's a lot you can do with this recipe to make it your own!).