Smothered Chicken

I've been trying to do this the right way for a long time and I finally hit it out of the park. I followed the recipe from Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen, but the method is the same for almost all the smothered chicken recipes out there. It's a simple, 4-step process.

Season the chicken and then dredge it in seasoned flour.

Fry the chicken until it's about halfway done. Paul recommends a deep oil bath, but others are fine with just a thin slosh of oil.

Make a roux with the oil and sauté the Holy Trinity plus the Pope in it. If you used a lot of oil, pour all but about a half cup out. You don't need a ton of roux, just enough to sauté the vegetables.

Put it all in a Dutch oven and add a lot of chicken stock. Cover and simmer for 20-30 minutes.

The end result was fabulous. My mistake in the past was getting the ratio of roux to stock wrong. It's a little bit of roux and plenty of stock. In fact, this one wiped out about 3 cups of my homemade chicken stock.

I served this over some white rice and the resulting meal was excellent.