Culinary World Tour: France (Chicken Fricassee)

Our culinary world tour now hits its eighth stop: France! Home to classic cuisine renowned the world over, picking one single dish out of the dozens (nay, hundreds!) of iconic meals was a tough choice, especially as we've done several in the past just in the course of trying out different cooking styles.

After much consideration and taking stock of what we had on hand, we decided to make a classic chicken fricassee, made with wine (a staple of French cooking) and something we never use in recipes: a bouquet garni (fresh herbs wrapped up in kitchen twine).

Before we get into that, be sure to check out the previous stops in our culinary world tour if you missed them:

Spain: Grilled Paella
England: Yorkshire Pudding
Ireland: Shepherd's Pie
Iceland: Lamb Pie With Rye Crust
Greenland: Suaasat
Canada: Poutine
Mexico: Posole

Chicken fricassee is traditionally made by starting with a whole fryer chicken and cutting it into pieces by hand - and if you've been following our blog, you know how much we love working with whole chicken (check out our coffee rubbed, orange injected and lemon-stuffed varieties). To make this a bit simpler and less time-consuming, however, we used a mixture of bone-in thighs and drumsticks. You could also use leg quarters instead.

For our French Chicken Fricassee, you'll need:

• About 1 pound chicken – if you are serving a large group, use a whole chicken of up to 3 pounds
• 4 Tbsp. Butter
• 3 Tbsp. Olive Oil
• 1 Cup White Wine
• 4 Tbsp. Flour
• 1 tsp. Sugar
• 10 – 15 Button Mushrooms
• 6 – 9 oz. Pearl Onions (about half a bag if you are using frozen)
• 1 Large Bunch Fresh Herbs
• 6 Tbsp. Heavy Cream
• 2 ½ Cups Chicken Stock

To get this savory wonder started, begin by heating butter and oil in a pan and briefly frying both sides of the chicken.

Keep frying until you've got a nice golden skin on both sides of your thighs and drumsticks.

Next we're going to change the texture of the chicken and get the sauce started by spooning in a few tablespoons of flour.

Eventually you'll get chicken surrounded by a roux (as the flour mixes with the butter), like this:

Next it's time to add in the wine. You don't need anything fancy or expensive here, any dry white wine will do.

The roux will start to thicken up a bit as it cooks together with the wine.

Now we'll pour in the chicken stock. As usual, we recommend making your own, because this gives you the ability to really knock the flavor out of the park and control how salty or sweet it is. If you go with store bought, we recommend the Knorr Flavor Boost tubs that get added to water.

Next we add in the bouquet garni - a mixture of two large fresh herb strands tied together with twine. The reason for the twine is to keep it all together without removing the herbs from the stalk, as we'll be pulling the herbs fully out of the fricassee later once all the flavor is absorbed. For our bouquet garni, we used lemongrass and basil (if you don't have a sweet herb such as lemongrass, you may want to squeeze in a few teaspoons of lemon juice).

Here we've set the entire bouquet directly into the sauce, where it will cook for about 30 minutes before being removed.

While that's cooking, in a separate pan we sautee some button mushrooms (with the stems removed) on both sides in a little oil or butter.

After they turn golden brown on both sides, pull the mushrooms out of the pan and set aside.

In the same pan, add the sugar and a teaspoon or two of water to cook the pearl onions.

After heating through, we're also going to set the onions aside - but don't discard the liquid in the pan just yet!

When the onions and mushrooms are done, pull the bouquet garni out of the pan and discard. Pour the pan liquid into the fricassee pan - adding in all that delicious flavor from the mushrooms, oil, and sugar.

Now we want the sauce to thicken, but we don't want the meat to overcook, so we're going to pull out the chicken and set it aside in a covered dish.

Next add in the heavy cream to add a thick, savory component to an already decadent dish.

After mixing in the cream, add the cooked mushrooms and onions into the sauce.

After the sauce has suitably thickened and reduced down, add the chicken back to the pan to reheat and soak in the flavor.

Now it's finally time to start plating up! Set down a bed of mushrooms and set a few pieces of chicken on top.

To finish the dish, crumble some of the remaining fresh herbs on top, and then dig in!