Chicken à la King Recipe - Creamy Chicken, Mushroom, and Pepper Gravy

[Music] hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with chicken ala King that's right nobody really knows how this great American comfort food classic got its name some say it was invented and named after a guy named Bill King others will say it was actually named after a gentleman named James keen but like I said nobody knows for sure which is why I usually go with the story was named after boxing promoter Don King and I'm never not surprised at how many people actually believe that but anyway this recipe is very delicious beautiful in appearance and pretty easy to make as you're about to see so let's go ahead get started and for this you're going to need like three or four cups of cooked cubed up chicken which is why I'm generally making this with the leftovers after roasting a big chicken we'll go ahead and eat half and then save the rest of the meat for this while of course using the bones to make the stock it's the perfect system and I will touch on that strategy in the blog post but one way or another we're going to need some cooked chicken and some stock and then we're also definitely going to need some mushrooms which I've simply halved and then cut into some nice thick slices and then we're also going to need some diced bell pepper I guess you could also use hot pepper or a combination and then last but not least we will mince up some shallots or some onion up to you and that is basically going to be it for our main ingredients that you may want to prep ahead of time and once that set we'll head to the stove where we're going to start the cooking process by putting a pan on medium-high heat and adding a little touch of butter and by the way in addition to enjoying a delicious recipe you're also going to learn whether your stove is level and as you can see mine is not although in fairness the entire city is now level but anyway we're going to go ahead and melt that butter on medium high heat at which point we will carefully add in our mushrooms along with a nice big pinch of salt and we will give that a stir and then by now you probably know the mushroom drill that Salt's going to draw lots of water so before the mushrooms saute they're actually going to sort of boil in their own juices but nothing to be concerned about is any experienced food wisher knows eventually that's going to evaporate and we're just going to be left with butter and mushrooms which is basically what we have at this stage right here and what we'll do once those mushrooms dry out and start sauteing is let them cook for about five minutes or until they start to turn a nice light golden brown at which point we can go ahead and toss in our shallots or like I said minced onion which are pretty much going to work the same they do say the shallot has a little more complex flavor but you know what they say a lot of things so no problem using the onions but anyway we'll go ahead and add our shallots and continue cooking for another few minutes which reminds me I should mention this is one of those rare recipes where we don't caramelize the mushrooms really dark I mean of course you can if you want but classically speaking this stuff is generally kept a little on the light side so I continued sauteing for another three or four minutes until my mixture looked a little something like this and then what we'll do once that's been accomplished is turn our heat down to medium and stir in our flour which will combine with that butter to form a roux our au UX and that of course is what's going to thicken our alla kyng so we'll go ahead and stir that in until all those mushrooms are evenly coated and then we'll basically just cook that on medium for about five minutes to take the raw edge off that flour and yes I agree that the spoon ela was a poor choice here I'm thinking that wooden spatula we have with the hole in it would have worked better but for whatever reason I was stubborn and stuck with the spoon ela although maybe it wasn't stubbornness maybe it was loyalty but regardless of your utensil choice we'll want to cook that for about five minutes or so and above and beyond appearance one tip you know you're getting close the flour is going to kind of smell a cooked pie crust so don't be afraid to use your eyes and your nose and then once we feel like our flour is fine we go ahead and dump in our diced peppers and we will stir those in and cook those for about a minute we're not really cooking them so much as we're just killing them with that Roux okay so we'll just stir those around for about a minute or so until we have something that looks like this and then once that's set we'll go ahead and introduce our liquids or at least two out of three so we'll start by de Glace in the pan with a little bit of sherry wine just a splash and I generally like to let that sizzle for about 30 seconds or so before adding the next liquid which will be some nice chicken stock or broth preferably homemade but you do what you got to do and we'll go ahead and stir that in sure we all know the old saying ha true cold stock no lumps so ideally that stock you add is going to be chilled but even if it's not I still don't think you're going to have lumps here which is great news for you Lumpa phobes seriously you people have to relax it's a proven fact that Ang's out will actually cause lumps so if possible try to cook without any fear and then what we want to do is go ahead and raise our heat to medium-high because we want to bring this up to a simmer and of course because we are working with a roux here we're not going to be able to tell how thick our mixture is until it starts to bubble but anyway to recap we're going to bring that up to a simmer on medium high stir it occasionally and once it does start to simmer we will back the heat down to medium-low and we'll simply let that cook for about ten to fifteen minutes stirring occasionally before we move on to final production and what we'll do at this point while we're waiting is go ahead and add a few of our seasonings first up we'll add a little bit of freshly grated nutmeg repeat freshly grated it's so much better we will also toss in a little bit of cayenne that never hurts as well as some freshly ground black pepper and I might as well also toss in another pinch of salt because even though I'm going to adjust that at the end I know just based on experience I'm going to need a little more here so we'll go ahead and give that a stir and like I said we'll let that simmer for about ten to fifteen minutes on about medium-low maybe a touch higher but we don't want this simmering too aggressively we're basically just given those vegetables a little time to soften and sweeten up as well as our mixture is going to reduce a little and thicken up a little more and I know I'm given the range of 10 to 15 minutes so how long should you go you decide I don't know that's you cooking but I let mine go for probably close to 15 minutes and then once that simmer for what we think is an appropriate amount of time we can move on to final production and all that means is we're going to toss in a little bit of freshly chopped thyme as well as some Italian parsley or if times are tough you can use regular parsley we will also at this point dump in our heavy cream or creme fraiche we will definitely be given extra credit if you use creme fraiche an extra extra credit if you use our recipe for homemade creme fraiche and then last but not least we will carefully stir in our chicken which for me was a little trickier than it should have been because I use such a small pan I always try to go as small as possible because it's easier to film but anyway no big deal thanks to my trusty spoon yellow I did get it mixed in without making too big of a mess and then here's the endgame we'll turn our heat down to low and because it's already cooked as soon as our chicken is heated through we are ready to serve assuming everything tastes good and it's been seasoned properly so before this gets anywhere close to one of our guests we'll go ahead and take a taste and might need a little more salt which I added and stirred in and that my friends is pretty much it as soon as your chicken is heated through and you've determined it's been seasoned appropriately we will go ahead and grab a ladle and serve this up and right here you can get a good look at my final consistency sorry final viscosity I don't like my chicken ala king too thick but I don't want to too thin either so for me this is just about perfect and we will go ahead and lay all that over some approved carb because I'm a little bit of a contrary in I usually go over mashed potatoes even though literally every alla kyng recipe in the world calls for toast rice or pasta they never mention potato but of course that's up to you you are the richard dreyfuss of would suffice --is but I did go Close Encounters on this thing and served it on a mini mountain of mashed potatoes and then we'll finish up with a little bit of fresh chive which I'm going to be snipping this time with scissors in an O Maj to one of my all-time favorites and huge influence Nigella Lawson so I'm going to finish up with some freshly snipped chives and that's it our chicken ala king is done and believe me this is every bit as delicious and comforting as it looks so let me go ahead and grab a fork and dig in and this really did come out wonderfully this is just one of those classic old-fashioned recipes that seems to warm you from the inside out I mean it's sort of rich and creamy without being super super heavy I mean we're not going to run a marathon after eating this but we could probably do pleiadies I think I'm not exactly sure what those are but anyway that's it chicken ala King sure there's a little bit of slicing and dicing and it takes a few steps to pull off but once you experience its warm comforting embrace I think you'll agree it's totally worth it so I really do hope you give this a try soon head over to food wishes comm for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music]

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 563,989

Keywords: Chicken à la King, Chicken, à la King, Recipe, Creamy, Mushroom, Pepper, Gravy, stew, sauce, chef, john, foodwishes, dinner, entree, poultry, comfort

Id: Q6YG0vSfVb4

Length: 8min 52sec (532 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 14 2016