Unleash Your Inner French Chef for Less: Coq Au Vin on a Budget
Updated: Dec 26, 2024
This classic French dish, made popular by French Chef Julia Child, features chicken braised in red wine with crispy pork lardons, pearl onions, and mushrooms.
The world is rediscovering Julia Child and Coq au vin is one of the easiest and most beloved dishes from her classic Cookbook and TV series. This version is easier than the original and costs around $15.
As a young woman and university student, I bought my first copy of Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" and wore it out, cooking classic French dishes for my classmates. It was a challenging task since so many of the ingredients were hard to find or expensive. Fast-forward a few (ahem) years, and I'm still cooking classic French food, but there are so many more options for finding ingredients at reasonable prices. Further, many recipes have been updated with simpler instructions.
In this post, I reference not only the classic recipe but also modifications made at SeriousEats.com. I invite you to read it; although it is long, it is worth your time.
The first handful of times I made the classic Julia Child version of this dish, I religiously followed the instructions in her cookbook. These involved preparing the onions and mushrooms separately and adding them to the chicken and wine at the last moment so they appeared perfect. It also involves igniting the dish with expensive cognac and boiling pork lardons. None of this is really necessary for a first-rate dish at home. The Serious Eats method advocates leaving the chicken marinating in the wine overnight (nice enhancement, but not necessary if you don't have the time), browning everything in an oven-safe pot, and using only 2 cups of wine in the sauce. I have found this method to work with the type of chicken I typically use - it is unnecessary to boil the chicken at length unless you are cooking a very old and tough bird.
Spending Less on the Wine
In terms of wine, I always use Pinot Noir for the best flavor, but it is not necessary to use a high-quality Pinot to produce a good dish. I went to Trader Joe's yesterday to buy the 2017 Charles Shaw Pinot Noir, which is a deal at $4/bottle. They did not have it in stock, but a perfectly wonderful Pinot (Cherry Blossom) for $5.99/bottle. It is always possible to find some great options for wine there or at your local wine store for well under $10 per bottle. A bottle of wine is 750ml, or 3 and 1/4 c. of wine. You will need two-thirds of a bottle to make this recipe, but you can serve the leavings in your bottle at dinner if you or your guest(s) drink wine.
Spending Less for Chicken
Now, a word on the chicken: I always make this dish with leg quarters. If you love chicken breast, make it with a whole bird cut into quarters, but the leg quarters are tastier and cheaper. Also, if you are making this dish for a dinner party, it looks so elegant. I can find 4 pounds of superior leg quarters for under $4. (Try wildforkfoods.com, Aldi, or Walmart—all have good options around $1/pound.)
One excellent way to buy chicken leg quarters is in a 10-pound bag from Walmart, Aldi, or another supermarket. These quarters contain portions of the back, which you must cut off before using. Put the backs in a bag in your freezer and make stock from them. The cost is well under $1/ pound (my most recent purchase was $0.65/pound). For this dish, that would put the cost of 4 pounds of leg quarters at $2.60—an amazing savings.
If you decide to include the chicken breasts, make sure to check out the information on the seriouseats.com recipe. The author advocates marinating the breasts in wine overnight and putting them in the pot midway through cooking the other pieces to limit the dryness of the breast pieces, which are more prone to overcooking. I see no reason to cook the more expensive breast portions of the bird since it is so hard to cook them properly in this dish. So, I’m including directions for leg quarters only.
Spending Less for Other Ingredients
In terms of vegetables, pearl onions are the most expensive. I found a fresh option for $2.99 and another for $3.99 at local markets. In a pinch, if you cannot find reasonable (or any) pearl onions, you can find a frozen pack of pearl onions at Walmart for $2. These frozen pearl onions often give you a better, easier, and quicker result. Because one package of frozen pearl onions can make two batches of this dish, this brings the cost down to around $1 for pearl onions. Thaw frozen onions ahead of time and dry them thoroughly so they will brown. Julia Child did not put carrots in her recipe, but seriouseats.com does. That is up to you. I do not put carrots in my Coq Au Vin.
Ingredients ($14-16)
Please Note: Although I try to keep all the recipes here under $12, the addition of wine puts this recipe a few dollars higher in cost.
4-5 leg quarters, with the back removed and retained for stock. ($2.60-$4, Walmart of wildforkfoods.com)
4 oz. salt pork, cut into 1/4-inch strips (Walmart, $2)
8 oz. mushrooms, quartered (Aldi, $2)
7 oz pearl onions, either fresh or frozen (Walmart, $1-2)
4 cloves of garlic, pressed (Aldi, $0.10)
2 c. Pinot Noir wine or other dry red wine (Trader Joes, $3.99)
2 c. homemade chicken stock, or low sodium purchased broth (Walmart, $1)
1/2 t. dried thyme
2 bay leaves
salt and pepper
1 package gelatin ($0.25)
3 T. butter, cold and cubed ($0.40)
1/4 c. flat-leaf parsley ($ 0.50)
Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Prepare the chicken - remove back area from leg quarter, if necessary.
Slice salt pork into 1/4-inch strips.
4. Place a large Dutch oven or heavy oven-safe kettle on top of the stove on medium heat. Brown the salt pork strips until crisp and set aside
5. Brown the chicken in the fat rendered out of the salt pork. Place the leg quarters fat side down for 7 minutes, then turn and brown an additional 5 minutes. Set aside the browned leg quarters and continue browning them until complete. Set the cooked chicken aside on a plate.
6. Brown the mushrooms in the same pot, adding a little oil, if necessary. Brown the mushrooms until they crisp up, for 10 minutes or so. Add the peeled pearl onions (If using fresh onions, slice off the ends drop them boiling water for a minute or two, then lift them out in a bowl and pull off the skin. If using frozen, thaw and proceed as above.). After a couple of minutes, add the pressed garlic.
7. At this point, add the wine to the pot and start scraping the brown bits off the bottom of the pan. Cook for 5 minutes, add thyme and bay leaf and bring contents to a simmer.
8. Stir in the stock. (Note: this recipe is better with low-salt homemade broth. If you don't have any homemade broth, use purchased low sodium broth. While the seriouseats.com instructions advocate making a gelatinous broth, I have had little success doing this. If you use purchased sauce, you will need to add gelatin or use flour or cornstarch to thicken the sauce.)
9. Add the chicken legs so that they are only partially submerged, so that the skin on the legs will remain crisp.
10. Transfer the pot to the oven, and cook, uncovered, for an hour and 20 minutes.
11. Take the pot out of the oven. Lift the chicken pieces out of the pot and place on a plate. Put the pot on medium heat and continue to simmer the sauce until it thickens. If necessary, thicken with the addition of dissolved gelatin in a couple tablespoons of water. (Mix an envelope of gelatin with a small amount of water and slowly add the sauce. Be sure to do this slowly until the sauce reaches the desired consistency.)
12. Once the sauce is the desired consistency, whisk in the butter. Add chopped parsley. Serve with new potatoes or rice, and peas.
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