Braising

My friend texted me the other day asking for help making braised chicken thighs to go with Alice Water’s phenomenal Leeks in Cream recipe. She wasn’t sure what flavor profile to use and had never braised anything before and I was more than happy to share some wisdom regarding this often over complicated, but at it's heart simple, technique. Braising is essentially cooking an ingredient in enough liquid to keep it moist (usually a couple inches) long enough for the compounds, connective tissue (in the case of meat) and flavor compounds to break down and conform. A great example of how this works is when we cook octopus. Like steak, if you cook the octopus quickly and assertively it is mouthwateringly tender. Cook it for a second too long and it becomes tough and rubbery. That is unless you continue cooking it in some liquid for several hours - that’s when something magical occurs and the octopus becomes tender once again, even more so this time, and more imbued with flavor than ever before. Of course, my friend wasn’t trying to braise octopus, rather she was trying to make a simple and easy dish that she could throw together. That’s the beauty of braising - even though it takes a long time, its requires little intervention and is almost impossible to mess up if you have time to spare for the alchemical mystery to take place. This is what I told her for braising a chicken to and it applies to most types of meat (and octopus) with the appropriate time adjustments:

Coat a Dutch oven generously with oil. You want to easily brown your chicken to a crisp golden, but you don’t want the total braise to be oily. Toss in some cured fatty pork (bacon, lardons, pancetta, guanciale, pork belly) and keep the pan hot enough to crisp the bacon, but not to burn it. Dredge your chicken thighs in flour seasoned generously with salt (it should taste salty if you dab some on your tongue), pepper and fennel (you could add in chili flake, paprika, cumin, coriander) and brown your chicken well on both sides. Remove from the pan and add in a chopped onion and a couple cloves of chopped garlic (you could use shallot, leeks, fennel as well) and sauté until the onion becomes translucent and starts to brown. Then deglaze with about a cup of white wine and return the chicken to the pan along with some fresh hard herbs (I love fresh bay leaves, thyme, sage or rosemary), peeled carrots and celery stalks cut in three inch pieces. Cover the whole pot with stock until only the very top of the chicken rests above the liquid like succulent islands, and set over a low flame. It should be hot enough that two or so bubbles rise to the surface regularly, and you may have to bring it up to a near boil first for this to happen. Leave the lid on cracked or make a cartouche, which is my favorite was to keep a braise moist and the sauce thick. To do this, take a piece of parchment paper (not wax, the wax will melt into your food) and fold it like you are making a paper snowflake, measure the radius of your pan and cut the end of your paper in a curve that length. Then, snip off the tip of your little pie wedge so that when you unfold it there is a hole in the middle. Place this paper round on the surface of the braise, it should fit perfectly inside the pot. Continue to cook the chicken for around 2-3 hours, checking periodically. You can add in some potatoes about an hour through to cook if you’d like a sturdier braise. The chicken is done as soon as it becomes tender – this happens when you take a fork and press it into the chicken, it should look like it’s about to shred and you should pierce it very easily.

 The sky is the limit with a braise like this – you could deglaze with red wine, brandy, sherry, bourbon, beer – even vodka. You could use pork, beef, rabbit, lamb, venison, wild boar, octopus, squid, etc. and you only need to adjust the cook time as the redder the meat the longer it takes (octopus takes even longer). You can use any vegetables you want, you can add broth, tomatoes, water or more wine for liquid. You can even add yogurt or buttermilk! Spices are also limitless and almost all cuisines around the world have a braised meat dish following roughly this method - from boeuf bourguignon to ropa vieja to doro wat to rogan josh. The only thing I suggest is to use your senses! Which flavor profiles go together? If I want to mix two components that are at odds how to I balance them? For example, classic coq au vin is like the chicken braise I shared, but with red wine. To balance this the recipe uses mushrooms that add earthiness and the red wine is traditionally a lighter variety. If you want to braise beef in yogurt, cumin and coriander and cinnamon are your friends, they’ll add depth and sweetness that meets everything in the middle.

Happy Braising!