This chicken with vinegar sauce recipe by Helen Graves is a glorious twist on the classic French dish. For the uninitiated it may sound strange, but the tangy, deeply savoury sauce is a revelation.
This sounds weird but is a riff on the French dish, ‘chicken in vinegar’. The sauce is piquant yet sweet and with the addition of cream makes a really beautiful and unusual meal. Serve with either baguette or herbed rice to soak up the sauce.
Heat a skillet over a medium-high heat and add the oil. Brown the chicken pieces, turning until golden all over. Once evenly coloured, add the butter and baste the chicken for a minute or so
Place the skillet in the oven for 20 minutes. Remove the chicken and drain off most of the butter
4
Over a low heat, sauté the shallots and garlic with a pinch of salt until they're soft and sweet – be careful not to colour them. Remove from the pan
5
Add the vinegar and cider to the pan to deglaze and reduce by half. Remove the pan from the heat and let it cool a little
6
Once the sauce is around 50°C (you can pop a finger in without it burning) add the 4 tbsp of double cream and whisk it in. Taste and add a little more sugar if you think it needs it
7
Add the chicken and shallots back to the pan before serving. Once all heated through, serve with a crusty baguette and plenty of butter
Helen Graves is a freelance food and travel writer, recipe developer and editor. She writes one of London's oldest food blogs, Food Stories and is editor of Pit Magazine, an independent magazine about live fire cooking and smoking. She is based in South East London and loves carbs, cats, crabs and kebabs.
