Chicken Cacciatore

September 3, 2015

Chicken Cacciatore

Ingredients:

6 chicken thighs

1 Onion

3 bell peppers (red, orange, and yellow)

Mushrooms (button)

28 ounce can diced tomatoes

2 cloves garlic

Olive oil

Thyme

Basil

Oregano

Chili pepper flakes

Spaghetti  or pasta of choice

Directions:

Large dice all vegetables

Spice flour and coat chicken thighs

Brown chicken well on both sides in olive oil

Remove thighs and set aside

Add more oil to pan, brown onion garlic and mushrooms

Add can of tomatoes, peppers and spices, and a dash of high quality balsamic vinegar if you have it

Add chicken back into pan, cover and simmer until chicken is cooked through (approx 30-40 min)

Remove lid and simmer for last 10 minutes or so to reduce to a nice thick sauce

Serve over pasta with good quality Parmesan cheese on top

Notes: I prefer to use bone-in skin-on chicken thighs, but you can use boneless and skinless, and reduce the time to cook the chicken, but the flavour will suffer some.

Some people claim it goes well with rice. I'm not one to judge, but this classic Italian dish should most assuredly be served with some sort of pasta, orzo would be acceptable I suppose.

This is one of my favourite dishes to show people how to make who are new to cooking. It tastes great and is pretty easy to make and pretty hard to mess up. An easily scalable dish that looks beautiful, tastes fantastic and makes wonderful leftovers. It even freezes reasonably well!

Tonight's version turned out very well, I reduced the sauce more then usual because I forgot to put the pasta water on until later, and some of the chicken thighs I had were very large. The sauce was thick and rich, and the chicken was moist and tender. As always, a favourite, and one I am excited to have as leftovers for lunch tomorrow

Chicken Cacciatore