Last Sunday, my niece came over for a cooking session with me.
Definition of cooking session = I buy all the ingredients and do the cooking while she assist me and once we are done, I will pack the food for her to take back home where she and her other five family members can enjoy the food in the comfort of their home.
End of definition.
Yes some people are blessed with the best of aunt.
So, we did a pasta dish and one pot chicken casserole upon the niece’s request. I shall save the pasta for another day. Let’s talk about the one pot chicken casserole, shall we?
The beauty of a one-pot dish is that you will have less dishes and cleaning up to do after cooking. Cooking in one pot also means the flavors can mingle and come together beautifully.
Basically the steps for cooking this one pot chicken casserole are:
- Brown the chicken pieces.
- Sauté the aromatics and tomato puree.
- Throw in canned tomatoes, stock and a few other ingredients.
- Add in the chicken.
- Forget about it for the next 75 mins.
This is the kind of recipe that you would spend 20 minutes cooking and then letting it do it’s own thing for the next hour or so but do take note that when this is forty minutes into baking, you would have gathered the attention of your neighbors with the awesome smell of the casserole.
By the time this chicken is in the oven for 1 hour, your neighbors would have started secretly wishing that you would send a bowl over because the smell is a tad hard to resist. You would of course not be sending anything over as you want to have leftovers for the next day’s lunch. In my case, I needed to be the best aunt and send the niece off with this pot of chicken. As the clock ticks away, your neighbor would know that getting a bowl of this isn’t happening and they can just hope that you would post the recipe on your blog at the very least.
Anyways, since the chicken was cooking away for 75 minutes, this resulted in a chicken that was so tender and it soaked up all the sauce beautifully. You can either cook the chicken on the stove at very low heat or you can slow cook this in the oven. I chose the latter.
This one pot chicken casserole is a great dish for the whole family and it is also perfect when you have guests over. This can be served with anything, from rice to pasta to crusty breads and couscous. It’s great with mashed potatoes too! You can also throw any vegetables that you already have on hand like carrots, potatoes, leek. etc.
Hei neighbors, if you are reading this, sorry that I could not send any your way that day. Perhaps you can give this recipe a try and send some over to me instead?
Ingredients
Method
- Place a large dutch oven or heavy-lidded pan on a medium heat. Season the chicken thighs with salt and pepper.
- Drizzle about 2 tbsp olive oil into the pan.
- Add the chicken pieces and cook for about 5 minutes on a medium/high heat or until golden brown.
- Remove the chicken from the pan and keep aside.
- In the same pot, add 1 more tablespoon of olive oil and add the onions and herbs to the pan and cook for at least 5 minutes.
- Add in garlic, fry for a further 30 seconds and stir in the tomato puree.
- Add in the flour and cook for 2 minutes.
- At this point, you can add the canned tomatoes, stock and season with salt and black pepper.
- Simmer the sauce for about 5 minutes.
- Add the chicken pieces, celery and beans.
- Bring to the boil then turn down to a simmer. Place the lid on and cook on the stove, under low heat for around 1 hour 15 mins.
- Alternatively, you can cook this in the oven.
- Serve with rice, bread or mashed potatoes.
