ONE-POT CHICKEN AND PEPPERS CASSEROLE
I’ve this brilliant cook book called the Flavour Thesaurus (affiliate link) and it’s one of the books I use the most for inspiration when I don’t know what to do with a specific ingredient. It gives you high level recipes and a lot of ingredient pairings.
One of the first recommendations I took from it was to try and cook chicken and peppers together slowly and see what kind of magic came out of the pot. And let me tell you, slow-cooked chicken and peppers is a much better dish than the sum of its two main ingredients. The flavours wrap around each other and the sauce is rich and glossy and full of savoury flavour. I love it and I hope you will too.
Ingredients
- Chicken (as you can see from the photo I used chopped chicken thighs but you could use the full chicken legs with a ratio of one per person, you could even do a whole spatchcock chicken if you have a tray that’s large enough, just make sure to adjust the cooking time according to the cut and make sure that the juices run clear when you spear the flesh before you eat it).
- Yellow onions, medium in size, I used two per person
- Peppers, I used 2 per person but this could easily be jacked up for 4 per person
- Garlic, as much as you like, I used a whole bulb, thinly sliced
- Fresh thyme, a few twigs
- Wine, I used about half a bottle of albarino
- Smoked paprika, I used about 2 tablespoons
- A good bit of salt
- Olive oil
Method
- First, fry your chicken (you want to have the chicken nicely salted please) on low heat, skin down, you’re looking for a good golden colour so take your time.
- Once you have the golden colour, remove your chicken from the casserole dish and add some oil if it didn’t render too much fat. Add your thinly sliced onion, again with a bit of salt. Cook on low heat for about 15 min with the lid on as it gets them cooking faster, cook them a good further 20 min on low heat so that they caramelise and are not too wet.
- Once the onions are brown, add all the other ingredients (the peppers and garlic need to be sliced thinly) and just about cover with the wine and cook on low heat with the lid on for 30 min. While that’s happening please pre-heat your oven to 150 C.
- Place the casserole dish minus the lid into the oven for another 20 min or until most of the wine is gone and the chicken isn’t wet on top any more. It won’t be crackling but the skin will be on its way to it if you get me.
- Serve with a load of crusty bread.
