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To Stew Chicken
Cut into pieces, place in stew pan with giblets. Pour 1 pint boiling water over it, cover and cook 15 minutes. Put a tablespoon butter and flour together, add gradually to the water in the chicken. Cook until tender. Serve with a sauce made from the liquor, add mushrooms, celery and giblets, or use only giblet sauce. Tomatoes make a nice sauce. Dumplings can be used if desired.
A bare-bones braise from the era when a stewing hen was a working bird past its laying days. The method still works, but the timings assume a tougher chicken than anything sold today.
- The hinge: cook to tender, not to the clockThe fifteen minutes is only the initial covered cooking; the real instruction is "cook until tender." A supermarket broiler-fryer cut into eight pieces will be done in 30-40 minutes at a bare simmer, while a true stewing hen can take two hours or more.
- Size and yieldAssume a 3 1/2 to 4 lb bird cut into serving pieces, which will feed four. One pint of boiling water gives only a shallow depth of liquid, so use a snug pan; a wide pan needs more liquid and gives a thinner sauce.
- Keep it below a boilA hard boil tightens the breast meat and leaves it stringy. Hold the liquid at a lazy simmer with the lid on, and pull the breast pieces out early if the legs need longer.
- The butter and flourThis is beurre mani\butter mashed with an equal amount of flour -- read it as 1 tablespoon of each, worked to a smooth paste. Whisk it into the simmering liquid in small pieces and let it cook two or three minutes to lose the raw flour taste.
- GibletsHeart, gizzard and neck go in at the start; they want the full cooking time. Add the liver only in the last ten minutes or chop it in raw at the end, or it turns grainy and bitter. Chop everything fine before returning it to the sauce.
- The sauce variationsMushrooms and celery should be sauteed separately and folded in near the end rather than stewed from the beginning, or they surrender all their texture. The tomato version means adding about a cup of chopped tomatoes or a small tin to the thickened liquor and simmering it down.
- DumplingsNo dumpling recipe is given here. Drop a standard baking-powder dough by spoonfuls onto the simmering stew, cover tightly and leave the lid alone for 15 minutes -- lifting it collapses them.
- SeasoningThe recipe names none. Salt the water at the start and finish with pepper; the stock will otherwise taste flat, since a modern bird brings less flavor to the pot than the old fowl this was written for.