Wine-Braised Chicken with Tomatoes

I love cooking with wine, mostly because I love drinking wine so adding it to my food is always a plus. I usually add dry white wine to pasta dishes but I’ve never added wine to chicken, much less used it to braise chicken. That all changed after I saw this fantastic looking recipe on Flavor Diva. I traded cherry tomatoes for chopped Roma tomatoes and and since I’m trying to incorporate more complex carbs into my diet, I served it with brown rice cooked in diluted chicken stock. It instantly adds a little flavor to the rice, so much so that I could have eaten it by itself. Also, the recipe calls for 1 whole chicken cut up but I was only cooking for myself so I used four chicken legs and carried the leftovers to work over the next two days. Speaking of which, I always think reheating chicken on the bone never tastes the same but this actually reheated really well! Must be the wine. I tell you, it makes everything better!

Wine-Braised Chicken with Tomatoes

1 whole chicken cut up (I used four chicken legs, so this is flexible)

1 tbsp of EVOO

1 tbsp of butter

1/2 medium sized onion, diced

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1 cup of dry white wine

1/2 cup of chicken broth

1 tsp of dried thyme

1/8 tsp of ground cumin

2 Roma tomatoes, chopped (or 12 – 16 cherry tomatoes)

salt and pepper

1 tsp of parsley

Directions

1. Rinse chicken legs and pat dry. Salt and pepper chicken liberally on both sides. Heat the olive oil and butter (hot, but not smoking) in a deep frying pan or dutch oven. Brown chicken well on both sides (should take about 10 – 12 minutes).
2. Remove chicken from the pan and set aside. Drain all but 2 tablespoons of the oil from the pan. Sauté the diced onion and minced garlic in the oil for about one minute.
3. Deglaze the pan by adding the wine and chicken broth and bring to a boil for about one minute. Use a wooden spoon or whisk to scrape the bits (from browning the chicken) from the bottom of the pan.
4. Stir in the dried thyme and add the chicken legs back into pan.
5. Add the chopped tomatoes and about 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1/2 tsp of pepper to the liquid and over the chicken. Cover, reduce heat to low/medium low and simmer for 20 – 25 minutes. Garnish with parsley and serve with rice.

[Via http://hungrygirlchronicles.wordpress.com]

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