Stove-Top Chicken Cacciatore

NOM NOM NOM-NOM-NOM

I'm not going to lie, I know that I am a good cook, but I was SUPER surprised at how well I pulled this off tonight. It was a weird day at work, the snow came like 4 hours early, roads started getting bad shortly after I got home, had to run to the grocery store for the tomatoes, then the liquor store (Colorado liquor laws are strange), and finally getting Squishy from his after-school care. That's a lot to do in an hour with crappy road conditions!

I mean come-on!!!! How delicious does this look?! Pretty sure the last time our kitchen has smelt this good was when le Boyfriend made chocolate cake... on Sunday... okay, so maybe our kitchen smells good a lot. :-)

The chicken got so tender that I could cut it with the plastic slotted spoon I had been using, and the veggies were still firm since I didn't cook them to death. We warmed up a tiny loaf of french bread with chunks of garlic in it and Oh.my.goodness!!! NOM NOM NOM!!!

Perfect dinner for when it's snowing!









Stove-Top Chicken Cacciatore
Polla Cacciatore sulla Stufa

Serves 4 

½ cup olive oil (cut back for less chicken - I might have forgot and had to scoop it out with a measuring cup after it got hot, oops!)
1 (3 pound) chicken, cut into 12 to 14 pieces, or 8 chicken thighs (we only used 3, but kept the same amount of veggies)
2 celery stalks, peeled and sliced (who peels celery?)
2 carrots, peeled and sliced
1 onion, chopped
1 cup dry white wine
1 (35-ounce) can imported Italian plum tomatoes, hand-crushed with the juice. (the largest, non-crazy large, size was 28 ounces, worked perfectly fine)
Salt and pepper to taste
½ teaspoon dried oregano or rosemary (I just sprinkled the heck out of it)
8 fresh basil leaves (I sprinkled the heck out of the dried crushed stuff)


Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the chicken, skin side down, and brown in batches, turning occasionally, about 10 to 15 minutes. Remove the chicken with a slotted spoon and set aside. Add the celery, carrots, and onion and cook, stirring until the vegetables soften, about 5 minutes. Add the wine and cook, stirring and scraping up the brown bits that stick to the bottom of the pan, until the wine reduces by half. Return chicken to the pan, skin side up. Stir in tomatoes and salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to simmer, and add pepper, oregano or rosemary, and basil. Cook partially covered (I had to use aluminum foil since I don't have a lid that large for the skillet that I used), for 45 minutes to an hour until the chicken is tender. Serve.

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On another note, it has been a whole year since I made the move back to Colorado!!! A whole post on that is in the works for a day that I don't try a new recipe.... so probably tomorrow or Friday.