01: Cook’s Illustrated Best Chicken Stew
Medium to Hard to prepare
1 Hour 45 Minutes active\cooking time
Give us 10 rating: ★★☆☆☆
Found here at Food.com
We decided to go with a Cook’s Illustrated for our first recipe in the Give us 10 Soups/ Stew series. Cook’s Illustrated is a wonderful resource of repeatedly tested recipes designed for the home cook. I am a big fan of Cook’s Illustrated and had great respect of the magazine and used to study their recipes and highlight, literally, the cook’s notes and techniques. I have learned a lot from the magazines and the television show America’s Test Kitchen.
Unfortunately, our first at bat was not stellar. First of all it took a lot more steps and ingredients to make something as simple as chicken stew unless you have anchovy paste on hand and an extra pound of chicken wings you just want to throw out. Cook’s Illustrated Best Chicken Stew also took almost 2 hours to cook and was only decent. For all of the steps taken to ensure deep flavor and umami such as soy sauce anchovy paste and white wine it just didn’t hit it out of the park.
The one thing I think that this recipe nailed was the stew consistency. It had great body. This recipe will not be making it into regular rotation. However some of the before mentioned umami techniques will.
- Jason
Amy's Take:
Snowflakes? Check. Sunday afternoon coziness? Check. Chicken Stew seemed like the perfect way to kick off this experiment.
Maybe were were not hungry enough (we call that the Dinty Moore effect*) maybe it was the recipe. Meh. I agree with Jason the consistency was right, but the flavor just was not there.
The kids were non- plussed, they gave it a 3.
For all the time and noise in the kitchen it did not seem worth the time.
- Amy
* Dinty Moore Effect- comes from a family legend where my Aunt and her kids were on a road trip and STARVING and some stew from a can really hit the spot. So when her kids begged to have it at home- let's just say, it was not the same.
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