How to Make Chunky Chicken Stew

Everyone’s got their favorite comfort food and chicken soup is on the top of my list. So tonight, I’m making my ultimate version, a chicken stew packed with tons of fresh vegetables. The base for chicken stew is obviously going to be the chicken and bone and skin on dark meat packs the most flavors and it ‘s least expensive cut to buy, I’m not going to argue with that. I do try and buy chicken thighs over drumsticks though because their meatier and their bones are easier to remove from the stew when the cooking is done. I’m starting this cooking off with my hearty chicken stew. And it’s really vibrant to take on the classic chicken soup. And it all starts with those chicken thighs that I picked up at the market. I will just going to get rid of the skins because that’s too much fat. So their going to go right into pan, just going to grab this, give my hands a quick wash since I am working with raw chicken, soap and water. I’ve got here time and I’m going to add six, seven sprigs here, I’m just going to dump them right in there. I also have garlic, peeled garlic, I’m going to take about six whole cloves, and I’m going to throw right into the pot. All right, I’m going to go back here and grab my carrots and a couple large onions. And I really always use onions and carrots when I’m starting any kind of super stew, people call it aromatics, they’re the base of really any good tasting broth. All right, so I’m just going to peel of the peels here. All right, for the carrots I’m just going to cut them in chunks. All right, so believe it or not this are all fundamentals of this stew and to really pack it with some flavor, you always got to add some salt about four big pinches and then plenty of ground pepper and I’m going to cover it with about two inches of cold water. That looks great just covering the carrots and the onions is perfect. All right, I’m just going to bring this up to a simmer. As that happens everything’s going to soften up. I had it on high heat, lowered it once it came to boil. But as its cooked down you can see that some white stuff has come to top that you want to get rid off, it doesn’t look good, it’s going to cloud up your soup and it doesn’t taste that good either. So I’m just going to go in there and just skim it off and you just want to get at the very top, you don’t want to take any of those delicious onions or carrots or anything off, you just want to get that scummy stuff off. It’s looking so good it’s reduced. All right, I’m going to start pulling out the meat because it’s starting to fall off the bones, they have tenderized, I have literally, I have just touched it and it fell apart. So I’m going to start taking out these thighs. I’ve gotten all the goodness and richness out of those bones and now I’m going to pull of the meat to make it a really easy stew to eat. So all those have minutes to cool, I’m going to get my potatoes that I’m going to add to my stew and I’m using baby red potatoes. And I’m just going to give them a quick wash here to get any dirt off, all right. And you can really use any kind of red-skinned potato. I like the red-skinned potatoes because they give really nice color, they’re kind of a waxy yet a little bit starchy so they’re really good for a stew. And these are really nice small, so I barely need to cut this up, I’m just going to cut them in half and I don’t want to add too many because you don’t want to overwhelm it. So I’m thinking that that looks good and I’m just going to add them in a couple hands full here. So I think that my chicken thighs are probably cool enough to handle now, great. So I’m just going to get a fork and this is so tender that this is barely any worked at all. It’s going to take two forks and separate the meat from the bone. See how easy that is? There’s no work involved here, this is gorgeous meat. And then I can add the chicken meat back in and you don’t want the heat too high on that or else it’s going to dry out the meat actually. You still want to be a nice low simmer, so that’s ready to go I’m just going to let that do its thing here.