Name: Poulet Basquaise
Prep time: 25 min
Cook time: 1 h 30 min
Total time: 1 h 55 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: French
Ingredients: 8 chicken thighs, bone in and skin on; 2 tsp fine sea salt; 4 tbsp olive oil; 3 red peppers, sliced; 3 green peppers, sliced; 2 onions, sliced; 6 garlic cloves, sliced; 150 g bayonne ham or prosciutto, diced; 400 g tin chopped tomatoes; 2 tbsp tomato purée; 2 tsp piment d'Espelette; 3 thyme sprigs; 2 bay leaves; 150 ml dry white wine; 20 g flat-leaf parsley, chopped

Poulet Basquaise

Chicken braised with peppers, tomato and piment d'Espelette from the Basque country. The peppers are cooked down to nothing, which is the whole flavour.

1 hr 55 min to 2 hr total 1 hr 55 min to 2 hr start to finish Serves 6 servings Easy

The peppers need forty minutes before the chicken joins them, and most recipes rush this. Peppers cooked only until soft stay watery and taste raw against the tomato; cooked right down they collapse into a jammy base that is the actual sauce. Piment d'Espelette is worth buying — it is fruity rather than merely hot, and paprika with cayenne is a poor substitute for the specific flavour this dish is built on.

Poulet Basquaise: Step by Step

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Salt the chicken and brown it skin-side down in the oil, 8 minutes, until the skin is deep gold. Turn, give it 3 minutes, and lift out.
Add the onions and peppers to the pan and cook over medium heat for 40 minutes, stirring occasionally, until they have collapsed and darkened. This is the sauce.
Add the garlic and ham and cook 3 minutes.
Stir in the tomato purée and cook 2 minutes, then the wine, and boil 2 minutes.
Add the tomatoes, Espelette, thyme and bay.
Return the chicken skin-side up, so the skin stays above the sauce, and simmer uncovered 35 minutes.
Rest 10 minutes, scatter with parsley, and serve with rice or bread.

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Tips That Matter

Forty minutes on the peppers before anything else. They are the sauce.
Skin above the sauce so it stays crisp.
Real Espelette. Paprika and cayenne are not the same thing.

Common Substitutions & Variations

An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.
A dry vermouth keeps for longer than an open bottle of white wine and is the closer swap than a random white left in the fridge; for an alcohol-free version, use the same amount of stock with a squeeze of lemon.

Pairs Well With

Rice · Country bread · A glass of Irouléguy

Sides from the same cuisine on this site: Boulangere Potatoes, Bretzel Alsacien, Brioche Buns.

Storage

Refrigerated for 3 days and better on day two. It freezes for 3 months.

Nutrition per Serving

No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.

Dairy-Free Gluten-Free No Added Sugar