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Tender, cream chicken served over a white wine sauce is a delicious and easy meal to throw together on a weeknight. Rich and bursting with flavor, this is a perfect thing to serve with some tasty starches like mashed potatoes or pasta.
For more great chicken recipes why not try lemon pepper chicken, apricot chicken, Instant Pot Shredded Chicken or my recipe for Chicken Paprikash!
Chicken Fricassee
A chicken fricassee is one of those meals that seems like it would be massively fancy and complicated but is actually nothing more than some seared chicken stewed in a creamy, white wine sauce.
Though there are plenty of ingredients in this recipe, it is an exceptionally easy dish to make quickly after a long day of work, thanks to the fact that a lot of the cooking time is idle time spent either browning the chicken or cooking the whole thing in the oven.
Chicken Fricassee Ingredients
Make sure you look at the recipe card at the very bottom for the exact amounts, as there are a few fiddly ingredients here.
Chicken
• Olive oil
• Chicken thighs
• Flour
• Garlic powder
• Salt & pepper
White Wine Cream Sauce
• Butter
• White onion
• Pelled large carrots
• Sliced mushrooms
• Minced garlic
• All-purpose flour
• White wine
• Chicken broth
• Heavy cream
• Minced thyme leaves
How To Make Chicken Fricassee
• Whisk together the flour, garlic powder, salt, and pepper together in a small bowl
• Pat each chicken thigh dry with a pepper towel, and then dredge each piece through the flour and place on a plate
• Heat the oil in a large ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat
• Fry the chicken, skin side down, until browned, about 8 minutes
• Flip and brown the underside for 5 minutes, and then remove back to a plate
• Drain all but 1 tablespoon of the oil and add in the butter
• Add the onions, carrots, and mushrooms and cook, constantly stirring, until mushrooms have released their moisture and have become golden brown
• Add garlic and sauté until fragrant
• Add in the flour and cook until the flour is mixed throughout and smells slightly nutty
• Stir in the wine and deglaze the pan by scraping all the brown bits off of the bottom of the pan, ensuring the flour doesn’t clump
• Stir in the chicken broth and then add the chicken thighs in between the vegetables
• Bake uncovered for 30 minutes until the carrots are tender and the chicken reads 185 Fahrenheit on an instant read thermometer
• Remove from the oven and stir the cream into the sauce
• Serve over mashed potatoes, rice, or pasta
How To Make Sure the Chicken Thighs Get Properly Browned
Chicken thighs are a fantastic way to include some decently lean protein into your diet. In fact, for a long, slow cooking dish like chicken fricassee, they are basically the mandatory chicken piece of choice.
Chicken breasts get too chalky and overcook too easily, whereas chicken thighs have enough fat to really bring the sauce together once it is all cooked together.
However, browning chicken thighs is sometimes a bit challenging.
The real trick to ensure properly browned, unburned chicken thighs is three main things – getting it dry first, not touching it while it cooks, and, optionally, a little bit of flour to help it out.
Drying the chicken thighs with a paper towel ensures that the chicken thighs can start to brown straight away without having to evaporate any surface moisture first, potentially ruining the crust.
As the chicken browns, you need to leave it completely un-touched – don’t poke it, don’t lift it up, don’t flip it halfway through; just let it cook. This gives maximum contact time between the chicken and the pan, ensuring a deeper brown crust.
For those that still struggle to brown their meat properly, or for those that just want an even deeper browning on their chicken, a bit of flour works wonders. Cooked properly, the flour won’t burn but instead develop into an even richer, more golden brown crust on the surface of the chicken.
How To Make This Carb Free
Chicken fricassee and many other similar chicken dishes that cook for a long time are frequently made by those looking to eat keto and avoid as many carbs as possible.
This dish can easily be converted into a low carb option by serving it with a bed of fresh veggies or even something like butternut squash spaghetti to trick your brain into thinking you’re eating a starch.
However, if you are looking to almost completely eliminate carbs from this meal, you would need to remove the flour used as both the dredging for the chicken and the thickener in the sauce.
You could either leave it unthickened, or you could replace it with a carb-free thickening agent, like agar powder or xantham gum.
Looking for more delicious Chicken recipes? Try these out:
• Creamy chicken and potatoes
• Oven Baked Chicken Leg Quarters
• Crispy Old Bay Grilled Chicken Thighs
Enjoy!
Love,
Karlynn
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Chicken Fricassee
Ingredients
Chicken
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 8 chicken thighs - skin on, bone-in
- 1/2 cup flour
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/2 teaspoon each salt and pepper
White Wine Cream Sauce
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 1 cup white onion - diced
- 2-3 large carrots - peeled then cut on the bias
- 1 pound mushrooms - sliced
- 2 tablespoons minced garlic
- 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup white wine
- 1 1/2 cups chicken broth
- 1/2 cup heavy cream
- 2 teaspoons fresh minced thyme leaves - not the stems!
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 375ºF. Whisk the flour, garlic powder, salt and pepper together in a small bowl. Pat each chicken thigh dry with a paper towel, then dredge each piece through the flour. Place on a plate.
- Heat the oil in a large, ovenproof skillet or braising pan over medium high heat. Place the chicken skin side down in the hot oil and fry until browned, around 8-9 minutes, adding more oil if needed. Flip and brown the underside for 5-6 minutes. Remove and place on a plate.
- Drain all but 1 tablespoon of the oil from the pan and add in the butter.
- Add the prepped onions, carrots and mushrooms and cook, stirring, until mushrooms have released their moisture and are golden brown.
- Add the garlic and saute until fragrant.
- Add the flour and cook until the flour is mixed throughout and smells slightly nutty.
- Stir in the wine and deglaze the pan by scraping all the brown bits off the bottom of the pan, making sure that the flour is also not clumping and mixes in. Once done, stir in the chicken broth.
- Place the chicken thighs into the pan between the vegetables.
- Bake uncovered in the oven for 30-35 minutes until the carrots are tender and the chicken is at least 185ºF on an instant read thermometer.
- Remove the pan from the oven and stir the cream into the sauce. Garnish with the fresh thyme leaves.
- Serve over mashed potatoes, rice or pasta.
Notes
- The nutrition calculator adds in all of the cream and oil, calories will be lower than stated.
Leslie Dunlop says
Made this this evening and it was fabulous! Will absolutely be adding this to the rotatio
Tim says
Made this recipe today for supper. Excellent! All those mushrooms, delicious! My wife loved it as well. I’ll be making this again.
Peggy says
What flavor of white wine do you recommend for cooking with?
Karlynn Johnston says
Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Grigio or a
Chardonnay all work! Crisp and fairly dry lines work the best, nothing sweet.
Lisa T says
Thanks, I’m going to make this for dinner tonight! Yum.
I only have chicken breasts? Hopefully I can use them instead?
Karlynn Johnston says
You can, just be very sure not to overcook them!