My thirteen-year-old son has just finished his first home economics and cooking course in junior high. We are going to make this together tonight. I want to show him that it doesn't take a bunch of crazy ingredients to make a delicious meal. And this is just a recipe to show him.
Unusual. Glenn 'almost' follows the recipe. He blinked, at too much butter for the roux. We will NOT be slaves to cookbooks!!! Rock on Glen. Rock on Jules.
This is the kind of thing my Grandma would do in the morning for something special, though I am pretty sure she would have put the butter under the chicken at the start. And She would have made more gravy from the extra grease because she knew we would eat it on toast the next day. Ah, I can hear my arteries clang just thinking about her toast and gravy. So good!
This is the way my mom prepared chicken, back in the 1950’s. Because she was a daring cook for the time, she added a pinch each of dried thyme and rosemary, and a tiny splash of Worcestershire sauce when the chicken was fried at the end. Oddly enough, although we ate potatoes at almost every meal, this particular chicken was always served with steamed rice. When the rice was all gone, we were allowed bread and gravy, which was the best part of the whole meal. The caramelized chicken skin bits plus all that butter made the best gravy.
@@jameshannon7162 Rice is cheap, but I think in this case it is simply that chicken cooked this way probably pairs better with white rice than with potatoes. Just sitting here thinking if I'd rather have this on rice or mashed potatoes, I'd pick the rice. And I really like potatoes, but I'd still pick rice in this case.
I could see adding some celery, onions, and some carrots to it quite easily, and some mashed potatoes for the gravy. As always Glen, you and Jules never fail to entertain us!
Chickens now have been bred to be quite fatty and tender, compared to the tougher, leaner birds back then. That probably explains the crazy amount of butter.
This was my Grandma's fancy meal. Old hens and and tough old roo's were treated to this method of cooking. All that fat ended up going into a beautiful gravy that we loved to pour over to rice or mashed potatoes. Sides were often foraged greens such as dandelions greens or mustard greens to add a nice bitter touch on the side. Additions like few new peas, or some foraged mushrooms, or a layer of thin sliced onions made this extra special.
When salt is the only seasoning, I think you have to add a tad more than a few grains sprinkled over the top of only one side of the chicken, to not end up with a pretty bland outcome. My grannies’ chicken and dumplings call for nothing at all but salt and pepper to season the broth and the chicken and the flat dumplings. (People had very little money or access to many different seasonings when she was learning to cook. Everything was basic) When I made it, it tasted awful, and I finally watched her make hers (which are amazing!) convinced she sneaked something more in. She doesn’t. She is just far more generous with the salt and pepper than I was, lol.
I love the fat dumplings as well. Evidently you're from the south. I was in late teens after I had moved to Texas, that I learned about flat dumplings and just how great they were.
I’m VERY generous with the salt & pepper when I make chicken & dumplings, but I’m a firm believer in adding sauce at the beginning and throughout cooking so the flavors combine.
@@margaretbedwell58 you’re right! But I do love both kinds of dumplings. My grandmother on my dad’s side made the fluffy drop dumplings, which are also awesome. I often have to make both kinds, because my kids love both too. Both my grandmothers were amazing cooks, but vastly different styles. One was from Arkansas, but with a French/Cajun heritage, and the other was from Virginia, but with a full on Italian ancestry. What a win-win for us kids!
This reminds me of the chicken my mom made as we were growing up. The only difference is she did it completely in the oven, covered with double foil and a "cookie sheet". And she also used quite a bit of black pepper. She probably did it in the oven because she was feeding 7.
I would salt and pepper both sides of the chicken before putting in the pan. Also in lieu of the water you could use stock. This is the Sunday dinner my Mother would make. Brings back so may memories.
Well this was hard times cooking, you had salt and maybe pepper if you were lucky. Plus the chickens back then hadn't been bred to be as big and fatty. They'd be lean and kinda tough.. But yeah spiffing this up now days is really simple.
My grandmother used to make Chicken Fricassee for Sunday dinners. It was always a family favorite. Then we all grew up and got busy and the family traditions died off a bit. In an attempt to impress my new hubby, I revived her recipe and it was every bit as good as I remembered it being. (My hubby thought so too!)
if you get a nice yogurt marinade with garam masala, tumeric and cumin on the chicken before hand, cook some onion with the chicken, and finish the gravy with warming spices and tomato paste, you've made a heck of a butter chicken.
Have you tried poultry seasoning with garam masala, or Italian seasoning and chipotle mustard with the garam masala? Have you tried any fruit besides tomato? I haven't, but am curious.
@@Sarina_Dear , I've done apple juice, cranberry peach, and pineapple with ham, but not chicken. Strawberry Propelle with chicken. The spices I suggested were really good on fried chicken! But everyone liked my fried chicken with onion powder, garlic powder, and ginger powder. The others were more polarizing.
I recently learned that Banana ketchup was invented during world war II to combat tomato shortages, immedately thought of this channel. Might be an interesting one to cover one day Glen :)
That's interesting, but I'm wondering where you learned this. "Ketchup" is kind of a way of cooking things and in different places many different recipes are used. My kids grew up with Banana Ketchup in the Philippines.
In the early 1900s there were all kinds of ketchup, not just made with tomatoes. I have some cookbooks that probably mention a dozen different types of ketchup used in different recipes.
Remember that in 1939 chickens were not as fatty. So a half a cup of butter might not have been unreasonable. But obviously that's not the way it is today you would want to hold back. Or possibly use chicken breasts which are less fatty to begin with
This was one of my favorite meals my grandmother made. She called it Smothered Chicken. She floured & fried the chicken first, so it was good and crispy. And then she made milk gravy using bacon grease. Salt and pepper were her only seasons. She made a large batch of the gravy to cover the chicken in the 9x13 baking dish. Then she slow cooked it for about an hour. She was born and raised in Missouri. Married and raised her kids in Dark Corners, Oklahoma.
I always enjoy your videos. They are a great escape on Sunday mornings after working Fri/Sat night at the hospital. Very rough times made better by way of your hard work in helping us understand how people made it by during their hard times. You definitely get this nurses seal of approval!
@@nancylindsay4255 If you have to the hospital, thank the staff. I’m just one of millions who have their heart in saving as many as we can. It’s not too late for this generation to turn this around and make the greatest generation proud.
I imagine the massive amount of butter is to make up for chicken of a different time. Our chickens now are, largely, sedentary (that is caged) birds where the chickens of 1939 very well may have been plucked, so to speak, from the back yard. They were literally tougher so the butter adds to what would likely be a smaller yield of chicken fat from the "Free Range" birds of the time.
Chickens were definitely skinner before the 1950s. If you hunt around in the Periscope Films collection you can find a video on various experiments that were done in the 40s or 50s (sorry, I forget the exact date) to breed a chicken with more meat on its bones.
As a kid who grew up in the 50s, my Mother always made simple dishes with only a few ingredients. Her contention was, as I learned later, “let the ingredients speak for themselves.” How true and I’m glad to see this recipe as well as Cottage Hot Pot make the series. I grew up eating soup bens and fried potatoes, roast, potatoes and carrots, dried beef gravy and toast, haluski, and a bunch of others. Thanks for having awesome content like this. Peace.
I love it! Very simple recipe. 1939 was the end of the Great Depression, so I wasn't expecting a dinner from that time to have a lot of extra ingredients.
This has become I and my wife's quick dinner when we get home late. I used a scotch ale the last time and tonight I'm making it with a stout from Walkerville Brewery. 10/10 every time. Thank you so much for doing this one.
I bet if you were using game fowl, similar to stringy yard chicken from back in the day, all that butter and brazing would make sense for tenderness. What a great technique for some super lean meat like skin on, bone in chicken breast.
Tried this one tonight. It was really good! Added some mushrooms and onions to the gravy and coated the chicken in egg yolk like it was done in your most recent smothered chicken video. Will make again. Thanks Glen!!
Definitely looks worth experimenting with and adding things. It also got my new kitty's attention. 4 months old, we've had her a week. When Glen was scooping out the fat from the first round, and then mixing the milk and flour to make the sauce, the kitten kept walking up to my monitor to watch. Had to pull her away so she wouldn't attack the screen.
I'll be making this tonight, adding pepper and whole cloves of garlic with the skins on. And making more gravy to go over egg noodles. My family loved your beef stew with biscuit dumplings, thank you!
I love simple recipes like this that one can tweak and make their own. They also show how far we've evolved when it comes to cooking as well. It's pretty amazing when one thinks about it.
Yes. Orange juice does sound good with this chicken. Almost all of the great cooks passed with the passing of our grandmothers. Glen, Thanks for keeping these recipes alive.
I like onions and bell peppers in my smother chicken. Sometimes if I have some, I will toss in a few carrots as well. I flour the chicken then brown it. Make a gravy with the pan drippings and let the chicken cook in the gravy until nice and tender.
I made this for dinner tonight. I added the mushrooms and some extra spices. Delicious! The pan was scraped clean. I shared this episode on my Facebook page.
Grew up on smothered chicken, more Cajun style. Still one of my favorite meals. Make a roux, Instead of water or milk, just chicken stock. Throw in the holy trinity and some garlic. Serve over rice. Man it’s good.
I grew up in the 80s with something almost identical to this. When you take the chicken out, throw in mushrooms and onions, once they are sauteed, make the gravy much like you did, plus a stock cube. Mom always served it with rice. It was absolutely one of my favorite meals!
Would have started the chicken, skin side up and then browned it after the warm was gone. But it sounds really good. Could take it in so many different directions. Thanks for sharing. 💝
In Louisiana I grew up eating smothered chicken. Ours used water to start. We added oil afterward with flour, onions, garlic, and celery. Then more water and put the chicken and simmer until the gravy thickens. I now use broth.
Thankyou, I have finally found a name for this cooking method! I have been cooking what we call 'saucepan chicken' for a few years now. I reinvented it when I had my fryingpan full of other veggies but wanted to braise whole chicken breasts. I just use a couple of glugs of olive oil in a non-stick saucepan and no water. It works best if the breaststroke start tightly packed covering the base of the saucepan. I start the tightly covered pan on high heat and once it starts to sizzle turn down to the low. I turn the chicken once or twice during the approx 20min it takes for the liquid to release then cook away. I ignore the pot for most of this time while making braised veggies and mash. The critical time is once the liquid is almost entirely boiled away it becomes thick caramelised and sticky so using toungs I move the chicken around, rubbing all sides of the chicken on the base of the pan to coat in the now frying chicken caramel. After taking the chicken out to rest I then make a quick gravey with any remaining caramel adding seasoning. The chicken comes out very moist but with complex flavours from the caramelisation.
Great video, I love how you do simple basic recipes and then encourage your audience to make them their own. Would love for you to do a video where you show us how you took one of the old cook book recipes and made it your own and modernized it, especially if you have a recipe from this series that has made it into your everyday meal rotation.
I've been doing this for years but never had a name for it. My variation starts with sauteing sliced yellow onion in virgin olive oil then adding chicken thighs on top. Some salt and pepper, cover and cook until the chicken falls off the bone. While this is cooking I make some plain rice. When the rice is ready I drain a can of peas, add to the rice and take the juices and cooked onions and pour over the rice. The peas heat up in the rice almost immediately so by the time this gets to the table it's ready and definitely one of our favorite chicken dishes.
The Spanish Rice recipe is how my mom made it, except updated to use Minute Rice & tomato sauce and prepared on the stove, not baked. That was in the 1960s. I still like it like that.
when you said you could add beer ... Yes! This is very similar to my Italian aunt-in-law's Polla alla Birra! It is basically, browning the chicken first in some olive oil, add a couple bottles of beer (enough to mostly cover the chicken), add a Bay leaf or two and some salt. Cover and let cook slowly until the beer has mostly evaporated and what is left is a beautiful thick sauce! Delicious!
I usually see your videos, I like the way you make food. Special I can learn more English when I hear you said in the video. It's really useful. Thank you so much
Did this tonight with a bunch of boneless, skinless chicken thighs. This is one of those recipes that's more technique than about flavours or ingredients. Fat is flavour, but during the Great Depression and with another war looming, it was also valuable for food. The butter amount may seem excessive now, but would not have been at a time when chickens were leaner and when the meal had to stretch out for a large family. Those leg quarters, for example, could be divided up to feed six people, and could even be shredded into the gravy prior to serving to feed even more.
When you were putting this together, my thought was to add pepper, paprika, and serve the chicken over either rice or egg noodles. Very simple, homey dish.
This is very similar to my favorite comfort food that my family always just called “stewed chicken.” I actually just made it last week. The only difference is that we start with about 3/4 stick of butter and and a sliced onion, and then add enough paprika to make it look orange, then add salt and peppered dark meat chicken on top and let it go until it makes its own juice that somehow emulsifies with the butter (might be the collagen) and then we have it over pierogis
this is good old fashioned cooking...no fancy pants stuff like everyone thinks we need these days...LESS is MORE sometimes...it's a chicken dish where chicken is the star and is actually what you taste. sprinkle a little pepper in there and leave it alone...YUM-E!
So this is basically the same pan fried chicken and gravy I grew up on, which my mother learned from her grandmother who apparently claimed she learned it from her grandmother. So we're looking at a a habit of cooking dating back to the 1800s.
I actually have done this before but I use beer or white vermouth instead of water and I add onions, bell peppers and other veggies depending on the mood. Then I pair it with rice and a nice salad. It’s a great basic technique to many possibilities. 👌🏼😉
I paused the video so I could read as much of those two recipe pages as I could see around your fingers. I was struck by how simple all the recipes were, and how salt and maybe pepper were about the only seasonings in any of them. They definitely look like most of them would make tasty food, and for little money, and also in fairly little time. Clearly the depression was still in full force when this book was published, and it was also when much of America considered salt and pepper all you needed for seasonings.
A trip in the way back mochine for me but we never used milk, we used water instead and sautéed onions for the gravy. You can also coat chicken on both sides with the gravy and leave to simmer on the stove with the lid on. Pork chops are also tasty prepared this way (as well as smothered potatoes).
I made this tonight, but used boneless skinless breasts, because I had some in the freezer. It probably wasn’t as good as yours, because it lacked the chicken fat, but it was still delicious. I added poultry seasoning, like someone else suggested. Thanks for the recipe.
We actually do this same thing all the time with chicken, we just don't use any butter. The fat from the chicken is enough to do the job (providing there is some dark meat in the skillet, and you leave the skin on) It's good low fat way to cook chicken when no butter is used. We even use skim milk for the gravy, and it works fine, the chicken fat provides plenty of grease.
This looks amazing to me! A few points, since you've repeatedly mentioned this a "method": I see myself trying this with goose or duck shanks just as well. I also see myself using green cabbage as a side dish. Or brussel sprouts. Where I add the onions to the cabbage. And leave the poultry as is. Another point: I think this is a perfect one to use "organic" poultry" from a local farm. Where it has been fed with the good stuff! My reason: we have a chain here, selling roasted chicken on the streets. Offering a fantastic mayonaise with their fries. The rub they use on their chickens is really GREAT! But: the chickens have a strange taste to them. Like they're adding fish meal to their diet? I don't know. But I think the quality of the poultry will be key, here. A friend once told me about a recipe of old: "Pommerscher Kaviar". Where you chop off raw goose fat. And mix it with only thyme and salt. To be used as a spread on bread. Only thing he mentioned: "you need organic grown geese. The fat should be snowwhite. No hint of yellow. Works only that way!" This came to my mind, watching this. Keep up the good work! With greetings from the far north of Germany!
Great stuff - sometimes SIMPLE is all you need - plus some accompaniments (mashed spuds, greens - fresh baby peas and carrots would be yummy) I'm really coveting your green skillet/brazier - now my husband is having to cook, he wants one... Thanks Glen & Jules...
"oven chips" can mean a few things. But basically it's chips made in the oven (or air fryer) not deep fried. You can make it yourself or you can buy bags of frozen pre prepared chips designed for oven baking. Typically they have some oil impregnated into the outer layer and sometimes a starch of some kind to keep them separate. You can buy frozen ones in basically every style. Thin french fry style like mcdonalds, thick cut wedges, steakhouse chips (usually has some skin on and wider than normal chips) etc etc. With a flavouring added to the outside like spicy bbq, rosemary and salt, salt and pepper etc etc or just plain. Next time you run down to the supermarket check the frozen foods section where you find things like fish fingers, frozen crumbed chicken/fish/pork and all those other frozen meals. Should be down there. Just check for it saying "oven ready" or something along those lines
Proper "oven chips" from the UK are quite different than US frozen French fries, i.e. they contain chip fat. And plenty of it. Not sure about Canadian "oven chips".
Smothered in butter and chicken fat, and completely delicious!!! Have you ever made a British recipe called Bread Sauce? Would love to hear your thoughts on it.
The idea of adding pepper is a good start. Maybe track down some good old Aussie chicken salt instead of plain table salt. Save all that luscious chicken and butter fat to fry scrambled eggs in. YUMMO!
This is the best way to start Sundays
My thirteen-year-old son has just finished his first home economics and cooking course in junior high. We are going to make this together tonight. I want to show him that it doesn't take a bunch of crazy ingredients to make a delicious meal. And this is just a recipe to show him.
How was it?
And please tell him that every recipe does not require canned chicken broth! lol Or a handful of kosher salt!
I always like Julie's comments at the end. She's a perfect counterpoint to Glen.
Unusual.
Glenn 'almost' follows the recipe.
He blinked, at too much butter for the roux.
We will NOT be slaves to cookbooks!!!
Rock on Glen. Rock on Jules.
This is the kind of thing my Grandma would do in the morning for something special, though I am pretty sure she would have put the butter under the chicken at the start. And She would have made more gravy from the extra grease because she knew we would eat it on toast the next day. Ah, I can hear my arteries clang just thinking about her toast and gravy. So good!
Yes, butter under the chicken. And more seasoning 🤣
This is the way my mom prepared chicken, back in the 1950’s. Because she was a daring cook for the time, she added a pinch each of dried thyme and rosemary, and a tiny splash of Worcestershire sauce when the chicken was fried at the end. Oddly enough, although we ate potatoes at almost every meal, this particular chicken was always served with steamed rice. When the rice was all gone, we were allowed bread and gravy, which was the best part of the whole meal. The caramelized chicken skin bits plus all that butter made the best gravy.
Jeez - that sounds incredibly delicious!
Momma knew rice was cheaper than everything.
@@jameshannon7162 Rice is cheap, but I think in this case it is simply that chicken cooked this way probably pairs better with white rice than with potatoes. Just sitting here thinking if I'd rather have this on rice or mashed potatoes, I'd pick the rice. And I really like potatoes, but I'd still pick rice in this case.
I was sitting in a coffee/cafe in Allegan when I saw your post today. Small world.
I could see adding some celery, onions, and some carrots to it quite easily, and some mashed potatoes for the gravy. As always Glen, you and Jules never fail to entertain us!
Ditto accept I would do rice instead of potatoes. Either way it would be great.
Indeed
@@MrRedstreak rice would be the way my grandmother served this, so it’s the way I do as well!
Chickens now have been bred to be quite fatty and tender, compared to the tougher, leaner birds back then. That probably explains the crazy amount of butter.
Agreed. The cooking time is too long for modern chicken too.
And thats why they had to be smothered, had to get them when theyre sleeping with a pillow
@@Shyolite 😂😂😂😂😂😂
Good point!
The problem with chickens bred to be fatty and tender is they've bred the flavor out.
This was my Grandma's fancy meal. Old hens and and tough old roo's were treated to this method of cooking. All that fat ended up going into a beautiful gravy that we loved to pour over to rice or mashed potatoes. Sides were often foraged greens such as dandelions greens or mustard greens to add a nice bitter touch on the side. Additions like few new peas, or some foraged mushrooms, or a layer of thin sliced onions made this extra special.
When salt is the only seasoning, I think you have to add a tad more than a few grains sprinkled over the top of only one side of the chicken, to not end up with a pretty bland outcome.
My grannies’ chicken and dumplings call for nothing at all but salt and pepper to season the broth and the chicken and the flat dumplings. (People had very little money or access to many different seasonings when she was learning to cook. Everything was basic) When I made it, it tasted awful, and I finally watched her make hers (which are amazing!) convinced she sneaked something more in.
She doesn’t. She is just far more generous with the salt and pepper than I was, lol.
I love the fat dumplings as well. Evidently you're from the south. I was in late teens after I had moved to Texas, that I learned about flat dumplings and just how great they were.
I’m VERY generous with the salt & pepper when I make chicken & dumplings, but I’m a firm believer in adding sauce at the beginning and throughout cooking so the flavors combine.
@@margaretbedwell58 you’re right! But I do love both kinds of dumplings. My grandmother on my dad’s side made the fluffy drop dumplings, which are also awesome. I often have to make both kinds, because my kids love both too. Both my grandmothers were amazing cooks, but vastly different styles. One was from Arkansas, but with a French/Cajun heritage, and the other was from Virginia, but with a full on Italian ancestry. What a win-win for us kids!
This reminds me of the chicken my mom made as we were growing up. The only difference is she did it completely in the oven, covered with double foil and a "cookie sheet". And she also used quite a bit of black pepper. She probably did it in the oven because she was feeding 7.
Good looking chicken. Recipes back in the day were so simple and delicious.👍 Love that pan too.
I would salt and pepper both sides of the chicken before putting in the pan. Also in lieu of the water you could use stock. This is the Sunday dinner my Mother would make. Brings back so may memories.
Well this was hard times cooking, you had salt and maybe pepper if you were lucky.
Plus the chickens back then hadn't been bred to be as big and fatty. They'd be lean and kinda tough.. But yeah spiffing this up now days is really simple.
Use the excess butter/chicken fat to make some mashed potatoes to serve the chicken over. Simple food at it's best!
My grandmother used to make Chicken Fricassee for Sunday dinners. It was always a family favorite. Then we all grew up and got busy and the family traditions died off a bit. In an attempt to impress my new hubby, I revived her recipe and it was every bit as good as I remembered it being. (My hubby thought so too!)
if you get a nice yogurt marinade with garam masala, tumeric and cumin on the chicken before hand, cook some onion with the chicken, and finish the gravy with warming spices and tomato paste, you've made a heck of a butter chicken.
Have you tried poultry seasoning with garam masala, or Italian seasoning and chipotle mustard with the garam masala?
Have you tried any fruit besides tomato? I haven't, but am curious.
That sounds amazing!
@@Sarina_Dear , I've done apple juice, cranberry peach, and pineapple with ham, but not chicken. Strawberry Propelle with chicken. The spices I suggested were really good on fried chicken! But everyone liked my fried chicken with onion powder, garlic powder, and ginger powder. The others were more polarizing.
Awesome idea! I love butter chicken but I don’t like the cubed white meat that every restaurant uses.
My mother always smother-fried leftover chicken or pork chops in gravy. Was great for breakfast with grits and biscuits.
Oh yeah, frozen peas and carrots with the chicken and gravy over a bed of egg noodles. 😋
Not egg noodles, yuck.....
Exactly the combo I was thinking of. With the noodles "buttered" with the extra butter/schmaltz removed from the pan.
Simple not messing food. We all have busy lives, and we need wholesome homemade 'fast food'. Thank you.
I recently learned that Banana ketchup was invented during world war II to combat tomato shortages, immedately thought of this channel. Might be an interesting one to cover one day Glen :)
That's interesting, but I'm wondering where you learned this. "Ketchup" is kind of a way of cooking things and in different places many different recipes are used. My kids grew up with Banana Ketchup in the Philippines.
Have to find a source of Gros Michel bananas to do it correctly.
In the early 1900s there were all kinds of ketchup, not just made with tomatoes. I have some cookbooks that probably mention a dozen different types of ketchup used in different recipes.
Remember that in 1939 chickens were not as fatty. So a half a cup of butter might not have been unreasonable. But obviously that's not the way it is today you would want to hold back. Or possibly use chicken breasts which are less fatty to begin with
Except more butter means more better. Youd be appalled by the amount of butter used in fine dining restearaunts. Especially French fine dining.
@@couldyou4745 I worked at an Italian eatery when I as a teen. Lots and lots of butter. OMG!
That looks phenomenal… think I’ll season my chicken with some additional poultry seasoning and cracked pepper… that’d round it out nice I’d bet
This was one of my favorite meals my grandmother made. She called it Smothered Chicken. She floured & fried the chicken first, so it was good and crispy. And then she made milk gravy using bacon grease. Salt and pepper were her only seasons. She made a large batch of the gravy to cover the chicken in the 9x13 baking dish. Then she slow cooked it for about an hour. She was born and raised in Missouri. Married and raised her kids in Dark Corners, Oklahoma.
I always enjoy your videos. They are a great escape on Sunday mornings after working Fri/Sat night at the hospital. Very rough times made better by way of your hard work in helping us understand how people made it by during their hard times. You definitely get this nurses seal of approval!
You are in many hearts, Christopher!
@@nancylindsay4255 If you have to the hospital, thank the staff. I’m just one of millions who have their heart in saving as many as we can. It’s not too late for this generation to turn this around and make the greatest generation proud.
Thank you Christopher for working long hours to serve those who are ill.
After a long holiday with family... it's such a JOY to have Glen on a calm Sunday morning. Thank you Glen. Always a pleasure. :)
I imagine the massive amount of butter is to make up for chicken of a different time. Our chickens now are, largely, sedentary (that is caged) birds where the chickens of 1939 very well may have been plucked, so to speak, from the back yard. They were literally tougher so the butter adds to what would likely be a smaller yield of chicken fat from the "Free Range" birds of the time.
Chickens were definitely skinner before the 1950s. If you hunt around in the Periscope Films collection you can find a video on various experiments that were done in the 40s or 50s (sorry, I forget the exact date) to breed a chicken with more meat on its bones.
More butter means more better.
Smothered pork chops from my great grandmothers recipe book was identical except for the choice of meat. My mom used Old Bay in it, too, though.
My grandma and my mum did something like this, my mum always served this with rice and lot of souce and now I must make some.
As a kid who grew up in the 50s, my Mother always made simple dishes with only a few ingredients. Her contention was, as I learned later, “let the ingredients speak for themselves.” How true and I’m glad to see this recipe as well as Cottage Hot Pot make the series. I grew up eating soup bens and fried potatoes, roast, potatoes and carrots, dried beef gravy and toast, haluski, and a bunch of others. Thanks for having awesome content like this. Peace.
I think this is the way my mom cooked chicken a lot. I loved it.
I really liked the Chop Suey recipe on the same page.
I love it! Very simple recipe. 1939 was the end of the Great Depression, so I wasn't expecting a dinner from that time to have a lot of extra ingredients.
This has become I and my wife's quick dinner when we get home late. I used a scotch ale the last time and tonight I'm making it with a stout from Walkerville Brewery. 10/10 every time. Thank you so much for doing this one.
I bet if you were using game fowl, similar to stringy yard chicken from back in the day, all that butter and brazing would make sense for tenderness. What a great technique for some super lean meat like skin on, bone in chicken breast.
Wine, mushrooms, sage
Tried this one tonight. It was really good! Added some mushrooms and onions to the gravy and coated the chicken in egg yolk like it was done in your most recent smothered chicken video. Will make again. Thanks Glen!!
Great basic recipe. Jumping off spot for what you had handy in terms of veg and spices. Making me hungry
I could watch these old recipes all day! Love it! Thank you!
Made this recipe today. I did reduce the butter to 1/4 cup. I also added pepper and paprika. Great flavor.
I’m making it this weekend!
Definitely looks worth experimenting with and adding things. It also got my new kitty's attention. 4 months old, we've had her a week. When Glen was scooping out the fat from the first round, and then mixing the milk and flour to make the sauce, the kitten kept walking up to my monitor to watch. Had to pull her away so she wouldn't attack the screen.
Gourmet kitty!
I would make this recipe just the way the recipe is written. How easy!
I love that there’s a recipe for Johnny Marzetti on the upper right of the first page!
I'll be making this tonight, adding pepper and whole cloves of garlic with the skins on. And making more gravy to go over egg noodles. My family loved your beef stew with biscuit dumplings, thank you!
I love simple recipes like this that one can tweak and make their own. They also show how far we've evolved when it comes to cooking as well. It's pretty amazing when one thinks about it.
Yes. Orange juice does sound good with this chicken. Almost all of the great cooks passed with the passing of our grandmothers. Glen, Thanks for keeping these recipes alive.
I like onions and bell peppers in my smother chicken. Sometimes if I have some, I will toss in a few carrots as well. I flour the chicken then brown it. Make a gravy with the pan drippings and let the chicken cook in the gravy until nice and tender.
I would add mushrooms and thyme and serve it over rice. Might have to try this with that chicken that's been staring at me from the freezer.
I made this for dinner tonight. I added the mushrooms and some extra spices. Delicious! The pan was scraped clean. I shared this episode on my Facebook page.
We make this with pork chops. Same method but we add a sliced onion just before making the roux.
I take some of the fat and fry apples and onions together in another skillet. So good with the chops and mashed potatoes.
@@lenalyles2712 Wow !! 😀
Grew up on smothered chicken, more Cajun style. Still one of my favorite meals. Make a roux, Instead of water or milk, just chicken stock. Throw in the holy trinity and some garlic. Serve over rice. Man it’s good.
I grew up in the 80s with something almost identical to this. When you take the chicken out, throw in mushrooms and onions, once they are sauteed, make the gravy much like you did, plus a stock cube. Mom always served it with rice. It was absolutely one of my favorite meals!
Would have started the chicken, skin side up and then browned it after the warm was gone. But it sounds really good. Could take it in so many different directions. Thanks for sharing. 💝
Yeah a lot of people have said that - but there is a long tradition in French cooking to start skin side down in this type of cooking / preparation.
In Louisiana I grew up eating smothered chicken. Ours used water to start. We added oil afterward with flour, onions, garlic, and celery. Then more water and put the chicken and simmer until the gravy thickens. I now use broth.
Thankyou, I have finally found a name for this cooking method! I have been cooking what we call 'saucepan chicken' for a few years now. I reinvented it when I had my fryingpan full of other veggies but wanted to braise whole chicken breasts. I just use a couple of glugs of olive oil in a non-stick saucepan and no water. It works best if the breaststroke start tightly packed covering the base of the saucepan. I start the tightly covered pan on high heat and once it starts to sizzle turn down to the low. I turn the chicken once or twice during the approx 20min it takes for the liquid to release then cook away. I ignore the pot for most of this time while making braised veggies and mash. The critical time is once the liquid is almost entirely boiled away it becomes thick caramelised and sticky so using toungs I move the chicken around, rubbing all sides of the chicken on the base of the pan to coat in the now frying chicken caramel. After taking the chicken out to rest I then make a quick gravey with any remaining caramel adding seasoning. The chicken comes out very moist but with complex flavours from the caramelisation.
Well, "saucepan chicken" does sound a lot less violent than "smothered chicken" 😉. And it will probably still be "skillet chicken" at my house 😂.
Great video, I love how you do simple basic recipes and then encourage your audience to make them their own. Would love for you to do a video where you show us how you took one of the old cook book recipes and made it your own and modernized it, especially if you have a recipe from this series that has made it into your everyday meal rotation.
Smothered Chicken was my nickname in High School.
I've been doing this for years but never had a name for it. My variation starts with sauteing sliced yellow onion in virgin olive oil then adding chicken thighs on top. Some salt and pepper, cover and cook until the chicken falls off the bone. While this is cooking I make some plain rice. When the rice is ready I drain a can of peas, add to the rice and take the juices and cooked onions and pour over the rice. The peas heat up in the rice almost immediately so by the time this gets to the table it's ready and definitely one of our favorite chicken dishes.
The Spanish Rice recipe is how my mom made it, except updated to use Minute Rice & tomato sauce and prepared on the stove, not baked. That was in the 1960s. I still like it like that.
when you said you could add beer ... Yes! This is very similar to my Italian aunt-in-law's Polla alla Birra! It is basically, browning the chicken first in some olive oil, add a couple bottles of beer (enough to mostly cover the chicken), add a Bay leaf or two and some salt. Cover and let cook slowly until the beer has mostly evaporated and what is left is a beautiful thick sauce! Delicious!
I usually see your videos, I like the way you make food. Special I can learn more English when I hear you said in the video. It's really useful. Thank you so much
Did this tonight with a bunch of boneless, skinless chicken thighs. This is one of those recipes that's more technique than about flavours or ingredients. Fat is flavour, but during the Great Depression and with another war looming, it was also valuable for food. The butter amount may seem excessive now, but would not have been at a time when chickens were leaner and when the meal had to stretch out for a large family. Those leg quarters, for example, could be divided up to feed six people, and could even be shredded into the gravy prior to serving to feed even more.
I love all the additions of spice 😍
Will cook on Friday. Thank you. Love your interaction. 🥰 to you both. 🙏
Leave all the fat in, add 3-4 tablespoons of flour and 3-4 cups of milk. Now you've got enough gravy for the potatoes.
Serious monk or friar vibes with the apron and matching hoodie
When you were putting this together, my thought was to add pepper, paprika, and serve the chicken over either rice or egg noodles. Very simple, homey dish.
This is very similar to my favorite comfort food that my family always just called “stewed chicken.” I actually just made it last week. The only difference is that we start with about 3/4 stick of butter and and a sliced onion, and then add enough paprika to make it look orange, then add salt and peppered dark meat chicken on top and let it go until it makes its own juice that somehow emulsifies with the butter (might be the collagen) and then we have it over pierogis
Paprika just makes everything better!
this is good old fashioned cooking...no fancy pants stuff like everyone thinks we need these days...LESS is MORE sometimes...it's a chicken dish where chicken is the star and is actually what you taste. sprinkle a little pepper in there and leave it alone...YUM-E!
This is very timely. I purchase chicken quarters, forty pounds at a time ($.99US per pound). I will try this recipe during the week.
If you are near a walmart, they sell 10# leg quarters for $5.50, .55 cents per pound everyday-best buy in the store !!
So this is basically the same pan fried chicken and gravy I grew up on, which my mother learned from her grandmother who apparently claimed she learned it from her grandmother. So we're looking at a a habit of cooking dating back to the 1800s.
I want to try this, might use lemon juice, add pepper some onion and garlic.
I actually have done this before but I use beer or white vermouth instead of water and I add onions, bell peppers and other veggies depending on the mood. Then I pair it with rice and a nice salad. It’s a great basic technique to many possibilities. 👌🏼😉
I think it could use some mushrooms and shallots
I paused the video so I could read as much of those two recipe pages as I could see around your fingers. I was struck by how simple all the recipes were, and how salt and maybe pepper were about the only seasonings in any of them. They definitely look like most of them would make tasty food, and for little money, and also in fairly little time. Clearly the depression was still in full force when this book was published, and it was also when much of America considered salt and pepper all you needed for seasonings.
A trip in the way back mochine for me but we never used milk, we used water instead and sautéed onions for the gravy. You can also coat chicken on both sides with the gravy and leave to simmer on the stove with the lid on. Pork chops are also tasty prepared this way (as well as smothered potatoes).
That's the way my dad taught me how to cook chicken when I tried it my very first time, sans the gravy.
Not to name drop but the recipe from America's Test Kitchen is fantastic. It has a few more things but still quite simple.
Yummy! Please pass the noodles!
Thanks you two....looks good. I will be trying this. Take care
I like this one and your tips on what to throw in are great .
I made this tonight, but used boneless skinless breasts, because I had some in the freezer. It probably wasn’t as good as yours, because it lacked the chicken fat, but it was still delicious. I added poultry seasoning, like someone else suggested. Thanks for the recipe.
We actually do this same thing all the time with chicken, we just don't use any butter. The fat from the chicken is enough to do the job (providing there is some dark meat in the skillet, and you leave the skin on) It's good low fat way to cook chicken when no butter is used. We even use skim milk for the gravy, and it works fine, the chicken fat provides plenty of grease.
Love the sound of this. Will definitely give it a go.
This looks amazing to me! A few points, since you've repeatedly mentioned this a "method": I see myself trying this with goose or duck shanks just as well. I also see myself using green cabbage as a side dish. Or brussel sprouts. Where I add the onions to the cabbage. And leave the poultry as is.
Another point: I think this is a perfect one to use "organic" poultry" from a local farm. Where it has been fed with the good stuff!
My reason: we have a chain here, selling roasted chicken on the streets. Offering a fantastic mayonaise with their fries. The rub they use on their chickens is really GREAT! But: the chickens have a strange taste to them. Like they're adding fish meal to their diet?
I don't know. But I think the quality of the poultry will be key, here.
A friend once told me about a recipe of old: "Pommerscher Kaviar". Where you chop off raw goose fat. And mix it with only thyme and salt. To be used as a spread on bread.
Only thing he mentioned: "you need organic grown geese. The fat should be snowwhite. No hint of yellow. Works only that way!"
This came to my mind, watching this. Keep up the good work!
With greetings from the far north of Germany!
I do a similar recipe - I add one onion sliced when braising... and add a can of cream of mushroom instead of flour and milk :-)
Great stuff - sometimes SIMPLE is all you need - plus some accompaniments (mashed spuds, greens - fresh baby peas and carrots would be yummy) I'm really coveting your green skillet/brazier - now my husband is having to cook, he wants one... Thanks Glen & Jules...
I would use seasoned salt and pepper, and use some chicken stock to turn those drippings into more gravy for mashed potatoes!! Yum
This looks good 👍
Still cant beat those Mcdonalds Chicken Tendies though!!! 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Are "oven chips" what we call "french fries"? haha Love Glen and Jules!
"oven chips" can mean a few things. But basically it's chips made in the oven (or air fryer) not deep fried. You can make it yourself or you can buy bags of frozen pre prepared chips designed for oven baking. Typically they have some oil impregnated into the outer layer and sometimes a starch of some kind to keep them separate.
You can buy frozen ones in basically every style. Thin french fry style like mcdonalds, thick cut wedges, steakhouse chips (usually has some skin on and wider than normal chips) etc etc. With a flavouring added to the outside like spicy bbq, rosemary and salt, salt and pepper etc etc or just plain.
Next time you run down to the supermarket check the frozen foods section where you find things like fish fingers, frozen crumbed chicken/fish/pork and all those other frozen meals.
Should be down there. Just check for it saying "oven ready" or something along those lines
Probably! Cookie sheet French fries is what I thought of, but I think my husband calls them baked fries?
Proper "oven chips" from the UK are quite different than US frozen French fries, i.e. they contain chip fat. And plenty of it. Not sure about Canadian "oven chips".
I’m so doing this right away.
Looks great!
Smothered in butter and chicken fat, and completely delicious!!!
Have you ever made a British recipe called Bread Sauce? Would love to hear your thoughts on it.
Thanks for this one. I have been wanting to turn canned chicken noodle soup into cream of chicken soup. I am off to experiment.
Chicken and gravy
I think this would be really good using red wine instead of water, adding mushrooms, and serving it over egg noodles.
You mean Coq au Vin? Lol
Going to make this today! Thanks!
The idea of adding pepper is a good start. Maybe track down some good old Aussie chicken salt instead of plain table salt.
Save all that luscious chicken and butter fat to fry scrambled eggs in. YUMMO!
Our variation was remove from grease then use canned mushroom soup milk and green beans for the finishing move. Then served with mashed taters.