Coq au Vin question

It's been years, decades, since I've made coq au vin. Nowadays, the worry is about fat. Okay, chefs, what are your thoughts about removing the skin from the chicken and when, or not at all? Your thoughts, please.

I'm not a chef, and I don't play one on TV, but..... here is my basic philosophy about this.

I have a couple cardiac problems, actually not diet or lifestyle related, but I still tend to be fairly careful most of the time about how and what I eat. So I figure that when I really want something "authentic" I can afford to do it the proper way. So I wouldn't take the skin off, and I would certainly brown the chicken in bacon fat. I would, however, be mindful of portion size.

Larry,

I've made it with thighs on the bone with skin on and with boneless, skinless breasts. Both are good - thighs with skin is better... If you go skinless boneless breasts, be careful about overcooking.

And salt pork is better than bacon.

It's been years, decades, since I've made coq au vin. Nowadays, the worry is about fat. Okay, chefs, what are your thoughts about removing the skin from the chicken and when, or not at all? Your thoughts, please.

I am a chef and I've played on one television and in books.

I am a proponent of always cooking the chicken with the skin intact. ( I do have a couple of dishes where I cook skinless breasts - mostly for presentation's sake.) *So* much of the flavor is lost when one removes the skin and attendant fat, particularly in the relatively bland tasting factory produced chickens one sees in the supermarkets. Skin-on, the chicken bastes itself. The basic poulet saute (which, after all, is how one begins coq au vin) really needs the skin.

If one has a problem with fat in the diet, one can always remove the skin after the cooking.

I do, though, think bacon works fine in this dish - but never in cacciatoria where I infinitely prefer the salt pork.

We kind of beat this subject to death last summer: http://www.wineloverspage.com/forum/vil ... t=cog++vin

As you may note we cook it with skin on with lardons as the Chef does. My wife Beverly is on a very strict diabetic/reflux diet, and she takes off the skin on her plate, avoids lardoons, and goes easy on the sauce. The dish thus stays within her diet.

Chef Carey said:

I do, though, think bacon works fine in this dish - but never in cacciatoria where I infinitely prefer the salt pork.

My Mom has seven kids.

My wife has a PhD in chemistry.

I've had the good judgement to agree with anything my Mom ever said about childbirth, and have never disagreed with my wife on a question of organic chemistry. One would think I'd be smart enough to pass on disagreeing with you in public over cooking....., but nooooo!

I've had this dish with bacon, and, though I've never done a side-by-side comparison, I believe I can tell the difference and have a decided preference for the salt pork. I learned this dish from The Joy of Cooking, and was disappointed when I saw they had changed their recipe to bacon in a more recent edition than the one I have.

Do you not percieve a difference in the finished product? Do you percieve and prefer the bacon?

[Jenise]

I vote with Chef (and I'm not sucking up, honest.) The skin adds essential flavor (and some gelatin, which adds mouthfeel). Defat and deskin after cooking if you must, but by all means cook with skin.

[Jenise]

We kind of beat this subject to death last summer: http://www.wineloverspage.com/forum/vil ... t=cog++vin

No, Carl! We may discuss a subject extensively and in great detail, we may even discuss it exhaustively, but beat it to death? There's no such thing where food it concerned.

What Chef Carey said.

The flavor of the chicken is mainly in the skin and the bones, not in the muscle. Cook your Coq au Vin with the skin on, and then, if you feel you must, remove it afterwards (and skim the fat). Certainly it's traditional to leave the skin on.

I kinda like the smoky flavor that bacon imparts (versus salt pork). But that's just my personal preference.

-Paul W.

you people are all right

IMHO

but i would take the skin off, unless it is a real skinny, natural grown chicken as a chicken should be anyway.

in france they have a lable caled "lable rouge"


than,
i would take away allways the fatty end of the brid, it has a adenosis,
and clean good out the fat underneath/behind the legs.



tradition-thoghts:

i know it is not traditional to do so, but hey, did the chicken look so when this recepie was invented?

the problem with american style bacon of course is that it is smoked; which changes the original idea. around here we can actually buy 'fresh bacon' which is also called 'side pork'. its the same thing as salt pork but without the salt which you can then add or not as you see fit.

i know it is not traditional to do so, but hey, did the chicken look so when this recepie was invented?

And of course, Coq au Vin was not originally made with chicken (female birds or capons), but with a cock. It was a peasant recipe that was the desperation answer to what do you do when the cock dies, or when he's too old to perform his henhouse duties anymore. You're stuck with a tough, scrawny old bird. You're too poor to just throw that meat away, but it's too tough for a roast or a saute. So you stew it in lots of cheap, acidic wine to help tenderize it, and you add onions and mushrooms and potatoes to stretch it out to feed the whole family.

-Paul W.

the problem with american style bacon of course is that it is smoked; which changes the original idea. around here we can actually buy 'fresh bacon' which is also called 'side pork'. its the same thing as salt pork but without the salt which you can then add or not as you see fit.

Where I want to eliminate a lot of the smoke in my recipes I specify blanching the bacon before sauteing. Makes a difference. I do like the flavor better than salt pork for this particular dish.

thanks allot paul ,

i didn´t know this!

but it really does, makes sens to me!