There is a good likelihood you have already made a fricassée with out realizing it. At its core, fricassée (typically spelled fricassee) is meat gently cooked in liquid and completed in a velvety sauce. Strip away the French identify, and it seems lots just like the type of weeknight skillet dinners many American house cooks make on a regular basis.

Many cuisines have a model of this method: meat simmered in broth or wine, paired with greens, and completed in a sauce that pulls all of it collectively. In France, it is fricassée. In your kitchen, it could have been a creamy hen skillet or a coconut braised hen. Totally different names, similar fundamental method—and one which’s endlessly adaptable, whether or not you are working with hen breasts, thighs, an entire hen, and even different proteins, comparable to tk or tk. My model leans on boneless hen breasts gently poached in a mushroom- and cream-enriched sauce, with a couple of pantry additions—smoked paprika or Aleppo pepper and fish sauce—that rapidly construct deep, savory taste.

What Is Fricassée?

In classical French cooking, fricassée is a hybrid between a sauté and a stew. The method dates again at the least to the sixteenth century. François Pierre de La Varenne, typically credited as one of many founders of contemporary French delicacies, included recipes for fricassée de poulet in his 1651 cookbook Le Cuisinier François. The phrase itself comes from the French fricasser, which means “to fry and break into items.”

Historically, a fricassée was outlined as a white stew. Not like a braise, during which meat is deeply browned, in early variations, the meat was cooked gently in fats in order that it stayed pale, then simmered in inventory and/or wine, and completed with a liaison of cream and egg yolks. Later variations launched flour and butter as thickeners, however the hallmark remained the identical: a velvety sauce that adheres calmly to the meat with out overwhelming it.

Although hen is the model most cooks know immediately, historic French tables noticed fricassées of rabbit, veal, lamb, and fish. By the 18th century, it was frequent sufficient to be thought-about a staple of bourgeois cooking—refined however not overly elaborate.

When the dish crossed the Atlantic, it developed once more. In the USA, significantly in Nineteenth- and early-Twentieth-century cookbooks, hen fricassée was typically made with mushrooms, onions, and cream sauces thickened with flour. As an example, Fannie Farmer’s 1896 Boston Cooking-Faculty Prepare dinner E book features a model completed with a flour-thickened cream sauce and butter, a far cry from the egg-yolk liaison of classical French cooking. Many American cooks additionally started browning the hen extra deeply in the beginning, making a hybrid that borrowed from each basic fricassée and commonplace braises.

At its most simple, although, the definition hasn’t modified. Fricassée is meat gently cooked in a flavorful liquid that is then completed right into a clean, wealthy sauce.

The Greatest Cuts for Fricassée

For this model, I needed to focus on how forgiving fricassée will be. In my recipe, I exploit boneless, skinless hen breasts. To be sincere, it is a reduce I often keep away from. But when there have been ever a time and place for them, that is it.

Rooster breasts, when cooked at excessive warmth or left within the oven for too lengthy, can rapidly grow to be stringy and dry. However once they’re gently browned after which poached in a flavorful sauce, they keep moist and tender. The velvety cream-based end on this recipe makes them style richer than they’re, and pounding them to an excellent thickness earlier than cooking ensures they cook dinner by means of evenly.

That stated, in case you want darkish meat, thighs or drumsticks are naturals for this dish. Simply alter the timing: Bone-in thighs will want nearer to twenty minutes to complete cooking within the sauce, whereas bone-in drumsticks could take even longer. A meat thermometer is your buddy—160°F for breasts, 175 to 185°F for darkish meat for probably the most tender texture.

Layering Taste within the Fricassée

The success of a fricassée relies upon not simply on the way you cook dinner the hen, however on the way you construct taste within the pan. It begins with a fast sear on the hen that leaves behind a lightweight fond—these browned bits that type the spine of the sauce. From there, mushrooms are cooked till they start to brown and switch savory, then woodsy aromatics, together with shallots and thyme, go in.

A dusting of flour thickens the sauce, giving it the basic fricassée texture: not gravy-thick, however velvety sufficient to coat the hen and cling to a spoon. White wine provides acidity and brightness to stability the richness, whereas hen inventory rounds out the physique of the braising liquid.

Then come two additions that are not conventional however present how adaptable fricassée will be: smoked paprika (or Aleppo pepper) and fish sauce. The paprika lends heat and delicate depth, whereas Aleppo pepper affords a barely fruitier profile with a delicate kick of warmth. Used sparingly, fish sauce disappears into the background, boosting savoriness with out ever tasting “fishy.” Collectively, they make the sauce style prefer it’s been simmering for hours—despite the fact that the dish comes collectively in underneath 45 minutes.

Ending the Dish

The hallmark of a superb fricassée is its sauce. After the hen finishes cooking, the liquid reduces barely and thickens. A splash of cream and Dijon mustard are whisked in on the finish, reworking it into one thing silky and balanced. The cream rounds out the flavors, whereas the mustard provides simply sufficient sharpness to maintain it from feeling too heavy.

The sauce is simple to handle. As a result of cream is a comparatively secure emulsion, and mustard acts as an extra stabilizer (it is an emulsifier in any case), it could possibly simmer gently with little greater than the occasional stir till it reaches the correct velvety consistency. There’s little danger of it breaking, which makes the end low-stress even for weeknight cooking.  Contemporary herbs—chives or tarragon—end the dish with brightness.

The result’s a basic fricassée—hen nestled right into a wealthy however not too heavy sauce that is comforting but elegant. Serve it with crusty bread, rice, or egg noodles to take in each bit.

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