Author Notes
Living in rural Tuscany has its advantages - home fed chicken! So many of our dinners consist of chicken but to tell you the truth I had never thought of using mustard with it. So thanks to food52 I came up with a new recipe. I had guests for dinner and wanted to make a more elaborate dish so I chose to use only chicken thighs with a very velvety mustard sauce. I chose to cook the sauce in a French style using the classic method of using chicken stock and a little roux to give the sauce more smoothness. The sage and garlic gave it a really nice taste and I served it with mashed potatoes (by today I have a fridge full of all sorts of mashed vegetables from my recipe trials!!) —Maria Teresa Jorge
Test Kitchen Notes
You will sop up every last bit of sauce with bread because it is so delicious. Maria Teresa Jorge took this classic dish and amplified its flavor by adding not a few sage leaves and garlic cloves but 10 and 12 respectively. We liked the touch of Cognac in addition to the wine, and the flour and cream slurry that goes in the end and smooths the sauce. A few cooking notes: we poured off the fat after browning the chicken, and our little chicken pieces cooked in half the time. Keep an eye on those little buggers. And if you want to skip the flour you can -- the sauce may not get as emulsified but it'll still taste great. - A&M —The Editors
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Ingredients
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8
chicken thighs
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12
garlic cloves with skin on
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10
sage leaves
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2 tablespoons
butter
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3 tablespoons
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
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2 tablespoons
Dijon Classic Mustard
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1/2 cup
White wine
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1/3 cup
Cognac
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1 cup
Chicken stock or water if you don't have stock
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1/2 cup
cream
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1 tablespoon
all purpose flour
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salt
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black and white pepper
Directions
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In a large enough pan, add the butter and the olive oil, the sage leaves and the garlics with the skin on them. When the butter starts to sizzle add the chicken thighs skin side down and let them get golden brown over medium low heat. Turn them with a spatula without damaging the chicken and brown the other side. They will be cooking later so you just want to get the nice gold brown colour now.
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Heat the chicken stock.
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Remove the chicken from the pan, add the white wine and the cognac and deglaze the pan, scraping any pieces of meet stuck on the bottom. Let the alcohol evaporate completely, then add the mustard and dissolve in the sauce with a whisk.
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Add the chicken thighs to the pan, add the hot chicken stock to 2/3 of the hight of the chicken thighs. Season with salt and freshly ground white and black pepper and let simmer over low heat, covered, for 20 minutes.
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Remove the cooked chicken thighs and keep warm. Let the sauce simmer over low heat to reduce to as much as you will need for the 8 thighs. Squeeze the garlics and sage in the pan with the back of a wooden spoon or spatula to release more flavour, then discard them.
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Sift the flour and dissolve it in 3 tablespoons of cream using a whisk. Add the remaining cream and whisk. Now add a bit of hot sauce, whisk together very well and slowly pour in the pan, whisking well with all the sauce, over very low heat. Keep whisking so the sauce doesn't stick to the bottom.
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Let the sauce reduce again to the amount you need, always stirring. You will need about a cup of sauce to serve with the 8 chicken thighs.
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Pour the hot sauce over the chicken thighs and serve immediately with some potato mash.
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