Chicken stew

After tweeting yesterday: The chicken stew was lovely, if I do say so myself. The best I’ve ever made. The egg-beater was the secret… I got a request from for the recipe.

Well, who uses a recipe? My mother (God rest her soul) just put stuff in a pot and boiled it. That worked fine. However, I wanted a thicker stew, so I have a little secret. Thus, I will share my method for chicken stew. By the way, method is often used in preference to recipe by older cookbooks and especially English cookbooks.

Mother Hansen’s Chicken Stew

1 or 2 onions, chopped
4 or 5 ribs celery, chopped
1 or 2 green peppers (capsicum), chopped
3 to 5 cloves garlic, minced
1 box button mushrooms, washed and scrubbed (20-30 mushrooms)
2 to 3 tbl olive or other vegetable oil, or butter or margarine
1 bouquet garni
salt and pepper to taste
2 qts chicken stock, homemade preferably
8 to 10 large chicken thighs or drumsticks or both, skin on
4 or 5 carrots, peeled and sliced into 1/2″ drums
10-15 new potatoes, washed, unpeeled, and quartered
1 swede/rutabaga/turnip, peeled & diced (optional)
15 to 20 small or baby onions, peeled (optional)
2 cans beans such as kidney, haricot or other similar bean, NOT green beans or lima beans (my choice, YMMV) with liquid
2 or 3 tbl cornstarch
boiling water

Put olive oil in stewpot large enough to comfortably contain 3-4 qts of liquid and stew. Don’t put this in a pot in which it will be a tight fit, as it will boil over or otherwise spoil your cooking. Put over high fire long enough to heat the oil and add the onions, celery, green peppers, and garlic. Turn down heat and saut

4 Responses to “Chicken stew”

  1. momshapedbox says:

    I still don’t know what bouquet garni ????

  2. chrishansenhome says:

    Perhaps they call it something different in the US.

    Basically it’s a small teabag-like parcel, filled with herbs of various sorts. This “teabag” is tossed into the stew, and the essences and tastes of the herbs leach out of the teabag into the stew without having little particles of herb on the surface of the stew. When you’re done cooking, you fish out the “teabag” and throw it away.

    It’s particularly useful when you’re making a stock and don’t want to have to filter the herbs you use out of the stock to leave it clear.

    The Wikipedia article on bouquet garni makes it clear that classically it’s a bunch of dried herb leaves and branches tied up and thrown in the soup or stew, then fished out. But nowadays, the teabag-like sachet is more usual. Here you get them in the spice area of the supermarket, and there are about a dozen stuffed into a spice bottle.

  3. momshapedbox says:

    Now I get it. Thanks for the great explanation to a non cook like me.!!!

  4. chrishansenhome says:

    You’re very welcome. We’ll make you into a chef yet!