Chicken leek and potatoes braised in white wine

My oh my. It’s been a hot minute since I sent one of these. I have about 10 half finished posts in the drafts folder… where they will forever languish, let me tell you.

Instead I’m sending you what I made tonight - a classic braise. The kind of meal that’s perfect for cold days and long nights. It’s the kind of meal I want to love because it feels like just the thing a mother would cook: hearty, warm, saucy.

In the end, it was fine. It tasted somewhere between ok and good, and was mostly a resounding MEH. Not bad, just a “I’m not mad that you made this for me, and I’m going to eat it, and I will kind of enjoy it, but I’m going to forget about this meal as soon as my head hits the pillow tonight” meal.

I’m going to blame it on the chicken. The more I cook chicken, the more I’m like - this isn’t worth my time. Unless it is Chicken Parm or fried chicken, it’s always just…fine. And I’m done getting out of bed for fine. I’m nearing 40 goddamnit and I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR FINE. REVOLT!

Anyway, tonight’s cookin’ song:

Tonight’s takes:

PK: Needed a tiny bit more salt. I love the leeks and the gravy. It’s good. You should make this again. I taste the wine in the sauce, not on the chicken. Make this again or nah, you don’t have to.

Greek father-in-law: The chicken is very good. Potatoes are a little bit sweet. I don’t know what you did. You didn’t put any salt on the potatoes. Chicken is a 10. I like lemon potatoes more. I don’t know what this sauce is that you made. It’s not bad. It’s very good. I’m not going to say something to make you feel good. I’m going to tell you the truth.

Helen (almost 10!): The chicken has nice flavor. What I love about this dinner is that it’s half carbs. It’s a bit plain though - the chicken. Let me try it with the sauce. Yea. It’s kinda plain. I just think the chicken needs something. The leeks don’t really add anything. It’s just like I’m eating plain chicken from McDonald’s with no ketchup.

Hector (7 now!): The potatoes are 7. Chicken is 9/10. The potatoes are 9. The chicken is 10. Actually the potatoes are 10/10. The sauce is very good with all of it. The chicken and potatoes are very good. It’s not very sweet like a candy. But not, not sweet at all. It’s the perfect touch of sweetness.

What I used:

• 10 boneless, skinless chicken thighs

• about 30 baby potatoes

• 2 large leeks

• 5 cloves garlic

• handful of fresh thyme

• about 2 cups veggie stock

• about half a bottle of white wine

• about 1/2 cup of flour

• olive oil

• salt & pepper

Bon Appétit recipe I roughly followed:

What I did:

Got my ingredients out.

Prepped my veg first. Sliced off the thick green parts of the leak. Then cut it lengthwise so I could wash out any dirt. Didn’t need to wash my garlic because it was already washed. It looks weird because it’s frozen. I bought one of those jumbo packs of Costco garlic this summer and I’m still working my way through it. I thought I needed that much garlic for a BBQ I was hosting. Way overestimated. Long story. It wouldn’t keep fresh so I froze it and have been making my way through it ever since. Anyway, frozen garlic seems to be cooking up just fine.

Diced my leeks and garlic.

Got my large Le Creuset out. Added a bunch of olive oil. Turned burner onto medium. Added the sliced veg, a healthy pinch of salt and started to sauté it.

Turned my attention to the chicken. Added three huge spoonful’s of flour to a bowl. Added salt and pepper.

Mixed it together.

Added 10 chicken thighs to the flour mixture.

Stirred my leeks and garlic. It had been sautéing for about 8 minutes in this photo. Looks like we’re halfway there.

Nine minutes later, leeks and garlic done.

Removed them from the pan. Dredged half the chicken in the flour mixture and added it to the pan. Added a bit more oil and turned the heat up a wee bit.

Flipped chicken after about 9 minutes.

Second side always goes faster. Took the chicken off after about five minutes.

Added the second batch to the pan to brown. And then realized I forgot to turn my oven on. F. My oven takes forever to preheat.

Flipped chicken after about five minutes. Added more oil. Should’ve added more oil before I put the second batch in. 🤷‍♀️

While the chicken is finishing up. I washed the thyme and boiled the water to make the stock.

After five minutes of browning on the second side, took the chicken out.

De-glazed the pan with about half a bottle of white wine. Scraped the bottom of the pan as best I could to get all the brown bits off.

Added the leeks and garlic back to the pan, and enough potatoes to just cover the bottom. Topped it off with the thyme.

Put the chicken on top. Added enough stock to fully cover the potatoes and go about halfway up the chicken thighs. Just over 2 cups worth. My oven was barely 200°F 🤦‍♀️. Decided to just braise this sucker on the stove top instead. Turned the heat up to high and got it boiling.

Turned the heat down to medium-low. Popped the lid on and after 20 minutes, the chicken was done. But the potatoes were not. Ugh. PK always ribs me about undercooking my potatoes and, damn it, it happened again!

I took the chicken out, stirred the potatoes, turned the heat up to high and put the lid back on. After 5 minutes of extreme boiling they were done!

Dinner time.

Next time:

Well, you read the beginning of this post. I will probably forget that I felt this way about this meal and make it again in a few years. It was annoying that the potatoes weren’t done - so maybe next time I would parboil them. But the bonus of boiling them in the sauce was that the sauce thickened up real nice, so maybe I would just do that again? I can’t be bothered to decide one way or another right now.

If you’re into inoffensive chicken meals with yummy sauce, make this.

For the rest of us, let’s just fry our chicken.

😋

xoxo

-Ellisa