I’ve mentioned my dad before when talking about foods that I grew up loving. He actually didn’t cook all that often, but when he did it was always a deliciously big deal, usually involving the Dutch oven. Pretty much all of my happy food memories from my childhood come from my dad–Dutch oven cinnamon rolls, omelets, oatmeal on cold winter mornings, the best scrambled eggs in the world, chicken cacciatore.
Chicken cacciatore is one of my earliest food memories (that and pimiento cheese spread; chicken cacciatore is a lot better!) I must’ve been younger than 6 because I remember eating it in our house before it was remodeled when I was in Kindergarten. That first time, it was actually Pheasant Cacciatore because I also remember my brother chasing me around the house with a severed pheasant foot, pulling on the tendon to make the claw move. We had a special relationship.
As I got older, I ate it less and less frequently and kind of forgot about it until after my husband and I got married. I discovered an old recipe and tried it out for him one night and he agreed–it was one of the best things he’d ever eaten. After some considerable tweaking on my part, I got the recipe just the way I wanted it (read: easier!) and now you get to have it. Just leave the severed poultry feet alone. Serve this for the family, serve it for company, serve it for a fancy or romantic meal–this is the little black dress of the pasta world, loved by everyone who’s tried it. I’ve caught people literally licking the plate on more than one occasion. It’s that kind of meal.
Start by chopping an onion, smashing a few cloves of garlic, and sautéing it all in some olive oil.
Remove that mixture and place it in your blender or food processor. Place some flour and salt and pepper in a Ziploc bag and add some cubed chicken.
Zip the bag shut and shake well until the chicken pieces are coated in the seasoned flour.
Add chicken to pan and cook until golden.
Remove from pan and set on a paper towel.
Add chicken broth, wine (or apple juice), tomato paste, thyme, and marjoram to the onions and garlic in the blender or food processor and blend it until smooth.
Place chicken in a slow-cooker and top with a bay leaf.
Pour that delicious sauce right over it.
Cook on low for a few hours. When you have about 1/2 hour to go, add the mushrooms and the chopped green pepper.
When it’s all done serve over your favorite pasta with a little parmesan and fresh herbs if you feel like it.
Y’all. I could drink this sauce.
Chicken Cacciatore
Serve this for the family, serve it for company, serve it for a fancy or romantic meal–this is the little black dress of the pasta world, loved by everyone who’s tried it. I’ve caught people literally licking the plate on more than one occasion. It’s that kind of meal.
Servings servings
Equipment
- pressure cooker optional
Ingredients
- 1 pound boneless skinless chicken breasts or thighs or a combination of the two, trimmed of fat and cut into bite-sized pieces
- ¼ cup white flour
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- ½ cup olive oil
- 1 onion roughly chopped
- 5-6 cloves garlic peeled and crushed*
- 1 6-ounce can tomato paste
- 1 cup white wine or 1 cup apple or white grape juice mixed with 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
- 1 ½ cups chicken broth
- ¼ teaspoon thyme
- ¼ teaspoon marjoram
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 cup mushrooms sliced
- 1 green pepper seeded and chopped
Instructions
- Heat olive oil in skillet over medium heat. When oil is hot, add onions and garlic and stir frequently until onions are tender and garlic is fragrant. Remove with a slotted spoon (this is why you need to keep the onion and garlic pieces big), shake off excess oil (you don't have to go crazy here, a little olive oil never killed anyone!), and transfer to your blender. Increase heat to medium-high.
- In a large Ziploc bag, combine flour, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1 teaspoon black pepper. Add chicken pieces, seal bag, and shake to coat pieces with flour. Dump the entire bag into the hot pan and stir quickly to prevent pieces from sticking together. Saute until chicken is golden. Remove chicken with slotted spoon and drain on a paper towel. Turn off the heat under the oil.
- While the chicken is draining, add wine, chicken broth, tomato paste, thyme, and marjoram to the onions and garlic in the blender. Blend until smooth. Place chicken and bay leaf in your slow cooker and then pour the sauce over the chicken. Place lid on slow cooker and cook on high for 3.5-4 hours.
- When you have about ½ hour to go, add the mushrooms and the chopped green pepper. Cook until mushrooms and pepper are tender. Remove bay leaf and serve over pasta.
Notes
*The easiest way to use garlic in this dish is to remove the cloves from the head and then smash them with a meat mallet. Remove the skins and then sauté the whole, smashed garlic clove.
FREEZER MEAL INSTRUCTIONS:
Complete steps through browning the chicken. Instead of placing chicken in your slow cooker, place it in a freezer-safe container and cover with sauce. When ready to eat, place frozen mixture in your slow cooker and cook on high for 4-5 hours. You can either cut the mushrooms and peppers ahead of time and freeze them separately from the chicken and sauce or you can just plan to have those in your fridge when you're ready to make this.
STOVETOP INSTRUCTIONS:
Complete steps through browning the chicken. Instead of placing chicken in your slow cooker, place it in a heavy pot or Dutch oven, top with sauce, and simmer for about 1 hour (add the mushrooms and peppers in the last 20 minutes).
INSTANT POT INSTRUCTIONS:
Complete steps through browning the chicken, except brown it in your Instant Pot instead of on the stovetop. After draining, return the chicken to the Instant Pot, top with sauce, add the mushrooms and peppers immediately, and cook for 8 minutes. Remove bay leaf before serving.
Nutrition
Calories: 294kcal, Carbohydrates: 8g, Protein: 18g, Fat: 20g, Saturated Fat: 3g, Polyunsaturated Fat: 2g, Monounsaturated Fat: 14g, Trans Fat: 0.01g, Cholesterol: 50mg, Sodium: 895mg, Potassium: 436mg, Fiber: 1g, Sugar: 2g, Vitamin A: 106IU, Vitamin C: 20mg, Calcium: 22mg, Iron: 1mg
Calories: 294kcal
Cost: $12
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Questions & Reviews
This looked and smelled great, but was a miss for our family (and we did use the wine). Maybe it isn’t the recipe, but that we are not Chicken Cacciatori fans. I give it a 5/10. I LOVE this site though—I regularly look for my dinner ideas here. Thank you!
I made this last night for dinner and oh my goodness….I had to put it away before we ate the entire dish in one setting! (3 people should NOT eat a dish that serves 6 people in just ONE setting, right??) I have a cacciatore recipe for the crock pot, but this one is totally different with the blended sauce, etc. LOVE it! The only changes I made were to sub a red pepper for the green and, since my daughter is allergic to it and we don’t have any in the house, replaced marjoram with an Italian herb blend (marjoram-free). I did put this in my large slow cooker and it only took about 3 hours on high (just switched it to “Hold” until dinner). Thanks for yet another great recipe – Everything I’ve made from your site has been a “keeper”! 🙂
Here’s what NOT to do with this recipe: DO NOT use 1 *cup* vinegar in your wine substitute! ew, right? Read the directions, as I did not. I also did not have marjoram so I skipped it. This combination of foul plays made a meal that tasted VERY much like mustard and I am embarrassed to say that we had company over, DOH!
This is me kicking myself . . .
Oh, my gosh, MaryAnn, that is epic–like a story you’ll tell people for the rest of your life, hahaha! I’m so glad we could be a part of it. 🙂
We had this for dinner tonight and it was really, really good! The white cooking wine I used was a Holland House brand… granted, I didn’t have quite a full cup left but the sauce turned out great tasting! I didn’t want to run to the store for a green pepper but it was plenty flavorful without. I served it over some pasta with a sprinkling of some leftover grated asiago cheese. It was delicious… thanks for another great recipe, girls!
for those that have issues with the crock pot being too hot, every crock pot is different and typically the first time you make a certain meal you should be around to watch it — then you can know the proper temp/time for the next time you make it. ALSO, an important thing to remember is that the crock pot you use should be AT LEAST half way filled with whatever you’re cooking, otherwise it will usually cook too high because there isn’t enough food for the size and heat dispersion of the crock pot. I have a 4 quart crock pot, and this recipe just barely reached half way up I think, so if yours is larger that might be the reason
I absolutely DETEST green peppers. Any nuance of green pepper flavor ruins a dish for me. Would it ruin the apparent amazingness of the dish if I used a red pepper instead?
Yep, you could definitely use red pepper. It will be a different flavor (the green pepper adds a little bit of a sharp contrast whereas the red pepper will add to the sweetness), but it will still be delicious. Or you could just leave it out altogether. Shhh. 🙂
On your blog it says to add 1 TBS of white wine vinegar to the apple juice, but on the printable recipe it just says to use 1 cup cooking wine, apple juice, or white grape juice. I added 1 TBS of vinegar to my apple juice, but I was just wondering which one was correct? Thanks!
Last time I made this, I cooked it all in my dutch oven. I put the lid on and left for about 2 hours. When I came back to it, it had burned all on the bottom. Is it because I need to have it in a crock pot? I want to make it again tomorrow, but I want to make sure it doesn’t burn like last time. Help?
EJ–It can be hard to replicate the conditions of the crockpot in a dutch oven, which is probably the problem you ran into (the crockpot emits low heat from all sides). So yeah, you can either cook it for a long time in the crock pot or you can just cook it on the stovetop for about an hour, just be sure to stir it frequently so it doesn’t scorch.
I’m looking for a good buffet dish to serve a large crowd. Could I make this recipe ahead, combine the cooked chicken mixture with an easier-to-eat-standing-up al dente cooked pasta (like penne), refrigerate the whole thing overnight and then warm it the next day in the oven prior to serving? I’m thinking that with a chance to “marry,” the flavors may be even better the next day… Also, I’d likely double the recipe to serve 12 – 16.
I would probably make the sauce ahead of time and then add the pasta before serving. You could definitely do the penne–that would be awesome–but you know how sometimes pasta salads get flavorless or leftover pasta gets gummy? I’m afraid that might happen in this situation if you added the pasta the day before.
Do you really cook it on HIGH for 3.5-4 hours? When I got home after just 3 hours, my crockpot was scorched around the edges. I saved the sauce and chicken, but I thought I must have read the recipe wrong. Now that I know I didn’t, any ideas why it burned or what I can do to prevent that from happening in the future? It was still delicious, btw!
Kellie–I’ve had two crockpots and always cooked it on high in both of them. Yours may tend to cook on the high side, so you might just want to cook it on low if you’ve run into problems in the past.