Slow Cooker Chicken Cassoulet

Chicken Cassoluet

Slow Cooker Chicken Cassoulet. On a recent trip to France, I savored Chicken Cassoulet, a quintessential French dish at La Brasserie Bordelaise on Rue Saint-Remi, Bordeaux Old Town. The dish has medieval origins and was nothing short of fabulous. At its heart, Cassoulet is a slow-cooked stew of Chicken, Toulouse pork sausage, Duck, white beans, vermouth liqueur, bacon, tomato paste, and topped with breadcrumbs and baked.  

The importance of the strong flavors in Cassoulet like pork and duck is that they also flavor the beans, which themselves have no flavor, and the addition of the Vermouth which truly adds a special herbaceous flavor. In New Zealand, duck and Toulouse sausage aren't readily available in supermarkets, expensive if they are, and artisan butcheries are few and far between these days. What's one to do when not in France but want to cook and enjoy a Cassoulet?  Adapt, of course.

Adaptations include swapping chicken for duck, using a strong fresh pork sausage instead of Toulouse Sausage, and pork strips, chops or pork bones (*Caution: pork bones break down on cooking which may be a choking hazard and not suitable for children or elderly people). If readers happen to have duck fat or pork lard on hand, that could be used to brown sausage or chicken before adding to the slow cooker to add extra flavor.

Cassoulet ready to be cooked with chicken drumsticks, pork bones, butter beans, tomatoes, and rosemary

Ingredients:

1-2 chicken drumsticks per person, skin on to add flavor

Oil or pork lard to brown meat

1 sausage per person (optional)

250gm streaky bacon, sliced into thin strips about thumb width, or 2-3 pork bones

1 brown onion, thinly sliced

1 can cheapest white beans undrained (lima, butter, cannellini beans) 

1 can cheapest plain tomatoes (whole, diced, chopped, it doesn't matter)

1 tbsp tomato paste

1 carrot per person, peeled and sliced into rounds 

1 tsp instant chicken stock granules or one stock cube dissolved

1 cup warm water

1/2 cup vermouth (or dry white wine at a push)

2-3 sprigs of Rosemary 

Panko crumbs

Method:

Brown the onion, bacon (if using),chicken and sausages in batches in a frying pan on high. If you have duck, goose or pork fat/lard, use that to cook the meat with.  Otherwise, just use a small amount of whatever oil you have.  The objective is to brown, not deep fry or cook through completely.  If you don't have time to brown the meat, then don't.

Place meat into the slow cooker dish.  Add the can of undrained beans and liquid, the can of tomatoes and carrot. If you have celery, leeks or parsnips lurking in the fridge vege bin, don't be shy adding those too.

In a jug mix the water and dissolve the stock.  Add tomato paste, and vermouth or dry white wine to the jug then pour over the meat and vegetable mix.  Add sprigs of rosemary or other green woody herbs if you have them and push into the liquid. The liquid coverage should ideally be about 3/4 of the meat and vegetable mixture.

Turn your slow cooker onto low if you're cooking all day, or high if you're only cooking for 5-6 hours. If you can, stir once or twice during the day.  Note the mixture will be quite 'liquidy' when cooked - don't panic - it will thicken up during the breadcrumbs part of the process.

Heat the oven on to 180 c.  Remove the lid and take slow-cooker ceramic dish out of the heating unit, sprinkle a thick layer of Panko crumbs over the top and bake in the ceramic dish uncovered for 40 minutes, or until the sauce thickens.  Keep pushing the breadcrumbs down when the juice bubbles through.

Serving

Remove any rosemary or herb stalks.  Serve using a large serving spoon onto large plates with slices of baguette and a green side vegetable if you wish.

Bon appetit!