Sunday Gravy with yeah right: The Smothering Will Continue Until Morale Improves!

Good morning folks!

Happy long Memorial Day Weekend! 

Hell, it’s almost Summer and shit. We’re really starting to push through this offseason thing.

Down here on the harbor our asses are still sitting dead middle of our “May-gray” (usually followed by “June Gloom”.) That deep marine layer overcast that feels like it never wants to burn off. I can’t really complain too much since every fucking day has a high of 64 and a low of 53. It’s just that this shit drags on for weeks and even months. Could use a little sunshine, ya know?

It does allow me to keep using my oven and cooking indoors so let’s take advantage of that shit while we can.

In fact we’ll be using our oven again today for this very meal right here.

We’re making smothered chicken and rice, ya’ heard?

You long time readers know of my affinity for “smothering” proteins around here.

Shit, we’ve had smothered steak.

And a different take on today’s item.

Smothered pork chops,

hell we’ve done cooked us a whole mess of smothered dishes up in this here kitchen.

“Smothering” a dish is a southern, Creole and Cajun or you know, Soul Food preparation. It involves browning your protein of choice, then adding in various veggies and spices then building a roux that turns into a gravy then slow cooking the entire shebang until the protein is nice and tender and you’ve got a rich gravy to serve over your choice of starch.

According to the wikis “In French, the word ‘étouffée’ means ‘smothered.’”

[The jury is very much still out on my proper use of quotation marks]

Also not surprisingly, I love the shit out of étouffée.

This is all a very long-winded yet accurate and simplistic way to look at this very old cooking technique.

We’ve discussed this very thing many times, in the past cooks were basically forced to adapt to the selection of meat they had to work with. In many cases, particularly when you consider words like “Louisiana” and “Cajun” and “Creole” the cooks at work were not really working with your prime cuts. Many times wild game was used. More frequently it was tougher, leftover cuts of meat that required a slow cook or a braise to be palatable.

Hmm? Smothered squirrel? Hell, I’d try it!

Anyway, let’s get back to the smothering action today.

Not with squirrel, although my curiosity is slightly piqued.

We are going to be using bone-IN, skin-ON chicken thighs for our dish today. Thighs are just a vastly superior part of the chicken when you’re slow cooking.

Even though I’ve got several smothering recipes of my own, and from the aforementioned pictures I’ve already shared the shit out of them, I like to look for recipes out there in the internet wild and see what other cooks do and maybe get a new idea.

Again the idea is to read a bunch of recipes and maybe borrow a bit if this and steal a little of that but when I give full accreditation it means I pretty much went by rote according to the recipe linked. 

Pretty much.

Smothered Chicken!

todays variation inspired by iheartrecipes.com

1-2 lbs chicken legs or thighs

1 1/2 cup all purpose flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp ground black pepper

1 tsp celery seed

1 tbsp onion powder

1/2 tsp chicken bouillon 

1 tbsp garlic powder

1 tsp smoked paprika

1/4 cup vegetable oil

2 cups chicken broth

1 cup whole milk

2 tsp minced garlic

1 medium sized onion chopped

You know why this particular recipe caught my eye? She used a combination of stock AND milk for the gravy. I’ve always used just stock and thickened with a roux.

Since my gravy for my chicken and chicken fried steak is a cream gravy…

I was highly intrigued!

Goddammit, now I want fried chicken!

I fucking swear 8 out of 10 recipes for smothered chicken that I researched started their recipes off with “Boneless, skinless chicken breast.” Who the fuck would do that? We’re looking for some damn flavor out of our protein. We don’t need a lifeless wad of flesh with zero flavor.

This shit is about taste, dammit!

We begin.

Rinse and dry your chicken. Since this is skin-on check around for little bits of feather remnants. I find that shit all of the time.

Collect your carrot and finely dice.

Same with the celery.

Next we’re going to make a seasoned flour. Pour the flour into a bowl along with the garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper, paprika and the chicken base. If you have poultry seasoning that works just fucking fine instead of the bouillon. 

Here’s an oddity for you. I’ve never really messed around with our next ingredient.

Celery seed? I’m fully aware of its uses and applications and I have indeed used celery salt but this was a first for me. Toss that shit in the flour too.

Stir, stir, mix, mix.

That recipe list mentioned chicken stock. I wrote that shit on my grocery list and everything then I remembered that I had bouillon in the cupboard.

Remember? We used some in our birria consomme a few weeks back.

Anyway since we’re going to need 2 cups of stock, simply add 2 teaspoons of the bouillon powder in two cups of water.

Now stir it up.

Handy!

And you know my cheap ass appreciates saving a couple of bucks too.

Next take your clean and dry chicken and dredge each piece in the seasoned flour. I had four chicken thighs today so I browned them in batches of two.

Save that flour from the dredge! We’ll use some of that later.

Get the chicken into a heated skillet that’s been properly lubed with oil. I used canola oil today.

Five minutes per side gives us this.

Oh SHIT that’s nice. That’s fucking perfect right there. You need a lovely browned chicken skin for this.

Don’t be fretting about the chicken not being cooked all the way through at this stage. It will finish cooking in the oven.

While the chicken is browning, chop up the onion and some garlic.

When the first batch of chicken has been browned on both sides remove it to a plate and repeat the browning steps for the remaining thighs.

Let’s see if I can get that sexy golden brown thing going on the 2nd batch of chicken.

Oh HELL yeah.

See how the flour is starting to build a roux in that oil? Fuck yes, People.

Remove the chicken to the same plate as before.

When the chicken has been browned get the veggies into the same skillet.

That would be your carrot, onion and celery.

Sweat that shit down for about 5 minutes. Then add in the garlic for 30 seconds or so.

Remove the veggies from the pan and set aside with the chicken.

Now add 3-4 tablespoons of the leftover seasoned flour from the dredge and 2 cups of chicken stock into the skillet.

Cook and stir until it starts to thicken up some.

Next goes the milk and fresh thyme.

Cook the gravy for a few minutes until it starts to tighten up.

That’s starting to look like some proper ass gravy right there! Season with salt and pepper at this point.

Place the browned chicken and the veggies into a casserole dish and cover all that shit up with the gravy.

This will go into a preheated 350 oven for 30-35 minutes. Casserole lid on please. You could do this step in a Dutch oven with a lid too. I just love my sexy red casserole dish.

When done, let the chicken cool for fucks sake!

It’s going to be hot as shit for a few minutes.

To serve, add your starch choice – rice for me today – onto a plate.

Bet your sweet ASS this goes good on mashed potatoes too but we’ve discussed the “rice and gravy” thing before.

Add some of that silky gravy on top of the rice and then put a lovely piece of that chicken right on top. Along with your random vegetable side of choice, of course.

Like that will make this healthy.

Your beige meal is ready!

Already know how this tastes, don’t you? Damn right it does. DAMN right.

Think I’ll take advantage of this long weekend to cook up something proper for you all to peruse at a later date.

Thanks as always dear reader. That’s what I appreciates about ya.

Let’s do this Sunday Gravy thing again shall we?

Enjoy your weekend everyone.

PEACE!