Bonne fête! No Free Lunch is back for another Bastille Day, albeit a touch late. After a few months off, I think it's appropriate to return with a dish that's personally important to me. I started making my chicken cassoulet shortly after Ariel and I moved in together about a decade ago. It quickly became a staple meal, to the point were we just call it "beans." This is not meant to be a traditional Occitan cassoulet, but it does adhere to the rustic spirit of the dish and is authentic to the way I like to cook. It takes humble ingredients and puts them together into a very satisfying meal. I thought this was a great time to update the recipe to how I make it now.
I've made a few small but important changes to my previous recipe. It turns out that stews like this freeze exceptionally well and are great to pull out for a quick dinner later. As such, I've scaled it up, but a bigger pan is needed. Although precision is not really needed for something like this, I've also weighed out the vegetables for more clarity as there is a lot of variance in the size of onions and carrots. For the chicken, I now recommend bone-in pieces as there is flavor to be had in the bones. I usually pull the meat off the bones after cooking and return it to the stew to serve. This makes it easier to portion out and easier to eat, especially if you have to hold a baby. If you like the presentation with whole chicken pieces, skip that step.
Many great dishes balance richness and acidity, which I now get done with a little butter and sherry vinegar at the end. This should be done to taste - you can always add vinegar but can't take it away. I no longer recommend my old method of cooking the stew with a lemon as it can add bitterness. My last change is in the beans. The cooking orthodoxy (which I once followed) says to always drain and rinse canned beans. I think this arose from older generations who thought of canned food as a little unclean. For me, this changed from making Kenji's white bean soup, where he notes that there is flavor to be had in the bean liquid. If making a bean salad, I would still rinse, but in a stew, leave it in. I drain two of the cans to make room for some chickens stock, but don't bother with rinsing. I served with a little parsley for color and some crunchy baguette toasts.
