This quick chicken fricassee is a perfect lazy night’s cook up. Boneless, skinless chicken thighs are rich and ready quickly, and the sauce is three simple ingredients: white wine, briny olives, and the best cherry tomatoes you can find. By the time they simmer down to a pan sauce, the chicken thighs are fall-apart tender and full of flavor. Serve it over a few new potatoes, smashed on a plate.
Tips:
Use a delicious wine you would enjoy drinking. The flavors of the wine will intensify with reduction. Please, please no cooking wine! I like an un-oaked chardonnay or a sauvignon blanc in this dish.
This is also delicious made with bone-in chicken thighs, or any other cut of chicken. Just increase the cooking time.
The olives add quite a bit of salt to this dish, so season your meat judiciously.
If you crowd the pan when you brown the chicken, you will steam the chicken rather than browning it and a fond will not develop on the bottom of the pan. The fond, or browned bits of meat and juice, leads to a more flavorful sauce.
If the chicken is sticking to the pan, it just needs to cook a bit longer. Don’t tear it off the bottom of the pan.
Boil a few new potatoes up and smash a few on each plate. Then plate the chicken, two thighs per person, on top, with a few olives and tomatoes and a drizzle of the pan sauce over the top.
Quick Chicken Fricassee with Olives and Broken Cherry Tomatoes
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients:
a little olive oil for the pan
8 boneless, skinless chicken thighs, seasoned judiciously on both sides with salt and pepper
¾ of a bottle of delicious white wine
1 small clamshell of nice cherry tomatoes (heirloom if you can find them)
a handful of kalamata olives
Method:
- Heat a Dutch oven or enameled cast iron pot over medium heat. When it is hot, drizzle a few turns of olive oil around the pan.
- When the oil is hot, using a tongs place the chicken thighs into the pan in a single layer, leaving space between them.
- Brown the chicken for a few minutes. Turn it over and brown the other side.
- Pour in about ¾ of a bottle of white wine and toss in the olives and cherry tomatoes. With a wooden spoon, scrape up the browned bits from the bottom of the pan into the sauce.
- Reduce the heat a bit and simmer, uncovered, until the sauce is thickened and the chicken is tender, about 20 to 30 minutes.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh what I wouldn’t give to eat dinner in your house.
I love the way you phrase things. ‘Season judiciously’ makes me imagine this big judge with his gavel throwing salt all over the place, haha!
Adding this to my queue of meat dishes to make for Dad.
Haha! You are funny, Joyce!
I’ve just discovered your blog- what a treat… love your writing and photography!
Your description of this chicken dish makes me want to make it for Sunday night dinner. Delicious.
Oh, thank you! So sweet of you!
Chicken Fricassee is one of the quintessential puertorrican dishes I grew up with. I still make it all the time, but my recipe is a little different, though very similar. Thanks for sharing this version, looks fantastic.
I’ve never tasted Fricassee. I’ll have to sometime!