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The Secret of Delicious Fricassee

Nadia Galinova
Translated by
Nadia Galinova
Tasty fricassee
Image: M. Ivanova

Although the word fricassee is French, it is believed that chicken fricassee, as well as fricassee from other meat, was made centuries ago in England.

In some recipes, the meat is fried, but the classic fricassee is prepared only from boiled chicken meat and in the following article we will focus on this.

A basic rule when preparing fricassee is, apart from cooking the chicken meat well, also prepare a nice broth from it, which you will later use to make your dish.

Don't think that just by letting the chicken boil and adding some salt to it, you'll get a stunningly delicious chicken broth. This is grossly insufficient!

In the pot where the chicken was left to boil, add salt and some finely chopped celery root, parsnip and parsley root. The latter is now hard to find in stores, but you can use both parsley and celery and their aerial parts. Do not forget that not only the leaves of these vegetables are used, their stalks are also aromatic enough.

If you also have some carrots and onions on hand, feel free to add them to the chicken broth as well. These are not mandatory products, but if you also use them, the broth will definitely become richer and more aromatic.

When the chicken is cooked, you need to debone the meat (if you used bone-in chicken) or simply shred it (in case you chose to use chicken fillet).

Strain the broth and proceed to the next step, which is the preparation of the sauce for the fricassee.

According to some recipes the fricassee sauce is made from butter, flour, egg yolks and milk, but nowadays many cooks substitute milk for yogurt. Whatever milk you choose, it's important not only that, but also that the eggs have been left at room temperature and not just taken out of the fridge.

The secret of fricassee

We emphasize that we will not give specific proportions here, because they depend both on the amount of chicken you have cooked and on the thickness of the sauce you want.

In a bowl, mix 2-3 egg yolks, the milk or yogurt and add a little lemon juice to avoid your mixture becoming lumpy. Mix very well so that a homogeneous mixture is obtained.

Heat the oil in the vessel of your choice and add the flour while stirring continuously. The last condition is very important, because otherwise you will get lumps.

When the flour becomes a light brown, start gradually adding the strained chicken broth. Don't forget to mix!

In most chicken fricassee recipes, you can also add a few cloves of garlic and peppercorns. If you like such spices, we advise you not to skip adding them, by remembering that the garlic cloves must be finely chopped.

Finally, the egg-milk mixture is added, again gradually and with stirring and the dish is left to simmer like this for a few minutes.

When the sauce thickens enough, add the chicken to it and enjoy the extremely tasty and successfully prepared fricassee with your loved ones.

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