Beer Braised Chicken and Onions … with bacon. Need I say more?

This dish has a wonderful depth of flavor. It requires a couple hours, but it tastes like it took all day. The tomato paste adds to that depth and thickens the texture, but the dish is quite good without it. Because it’s a braise, it seems like a fall or winter dish, but because it’s chicken and takes less than half the time of many other braises, I’d love it on any but the most sweltering of mid-summer days.

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Servings…

The number of servings depends on whether you consider one or two thighs to be a serving. Keep in mind that there are loads of onions, and because it’s so beautifully saucy, you can serve it over lots of rice. I’m quite fine with a one-thigh serving. Tuck a serving of green beans into the side of the dish if you fear one thigh isn’t enough. If you’re still unsure, add an appetizer, salad, and dessert; then you’ve got something of a feast on your hands.

And – especially with all those multicourse components – this is definitely guest worthy, so long as you’re looking for something wonderfully done and impressively delicious but still somewhat homey and informal.

If you’re considering this to produce four servings, then a half-pound of bacon is plenty. For eight servings, you’ll need the full pound. Of course, you should cook the entire pound of bacon that you bought for this recipe regardless. You’ll have no problem using up extra bacon crumbles, in salads, grilled cheese sandwiches, or sprinkled over a couple of sunny-side-up eggs.

Cooking…

I use a 13-inch wide, 3-inch deep, heavy-duty, stainless steel frying pan for this. It provides more than enough space for all the thighs and can easily hold this much onion. A smaller pan would work, but I’d consider a large, enameled, cast-iron casserole to be a good substitute.

I prefer a thick-cut, straightforward bacon for this, but I’ve used cherrywood-smoked bacon and thought it worked well enough. I’d rather not have extra flavors competing with the braise, though.

The sugar helps the onion caramelize and adds a bit of flavor. It’s not necessary, though.

Serving and Reheating…

Serve the finished braise in shallow soup bowls with knives and forks.

This dish is very good leftover, microwaved. Flavor-wise, maybe it’s better leftover … but the textures when leftover are slightly less interesting, and it’s overall less juicy. Still, though, completely enjoyable.

Appliance Settings

Martha Stewart taught me how to use my stove. Back in the day, I used to cook at a lot of the recipes from her magazine and I was always ecstatic about the way they turned out. The way I approached timings of things was that if she said a certain result would happen in a certain amount of time, I’d make note of how long it took me to get that result, and if my timing was off, I’d adjust my settings the next time, so that my timing would match hers. Once I did this, I got consistently reliable results in all of her recipes. I’m sure that a real chef would roll their eyes at this, but it’s worked for me.

I realize that in my recipes, I present settings – like, instead of saying “turn it up to medium,” I’ll say “turn it to setting 4 (out of 9).” And I realize that’s it’s a little weird to do that. I do it for my own benefit, because when push comes to shove, this blog is my recipe book, written for my benefit, and I’m sharing it with the world for reasons not fully understood even by me.

Stovetop Settings

Here’s how I interpret my stovetop settings. In the following list, the words and numbers in parentheses are what appear on the burner dials. To the right of the equals sign is how I interpret them. “Lo”=lowest heat. “2”=low heat. “4”=medium heat. “6”=high heat. “8”=very high heat. “hi”=highest heat. Of course, it’s possible to position the burner knob to a theoretically infinite number of positions in between numbered settings. But in practical use, my stove isn’t infinately responsive; I’d say that there is only one intermediate position, maybe two, in between each number. So, for instance, in between 4 and 6, there is definitely a 5, which I consider to be a higher version of medium. However, on occasion I consider there to be two slightly hotter “medium” heat settings in between 4 and 6. (Now, I have had crappy stoves in my life that, in spite of whatever numbers their dials might display, have only three settings: low, medium, and burn the shit out of something. You gotta know your own stove.)

KitchenAid Stand Mixer Settings

Following the same method, here’s how I interpret the speeds on my stand mixer. “Stir”=lowest speed. “2”=low speed. “4”=medium speed. “6”=med-high speed. “8”=high speed. “10”=highest speed. This is in line with KitchenAid’s specs. It took me years of use before I realized that it’s possible to position the speed control level in between numbered settings. For instance, there is an unmarked “setting 5” in between 4 and 6, and KitchenAid considers it to be a slightly faster medium.

Cuisinart Hand-held Mixer Settings

“1”=low. “2”=medium low. “3”=medium. “4”=medium-high. “5”=high. “6”=whipping speed. “7”=very high whipping speed. This mixer doesn’t have a speed low enough that I’d consider to be “stirring.” But that’s OK. You can turn it off, and stir things with it manually. It also doesn’t have “in between” speeds, and there’s nothing you can do about that.

Beer Braised Chicken and Onions

Credit for images on this page: Make It Like a Man! unless otherwise credited. This content was not solicited by anyone, nor was it written in exchange for anything. Thank you, Kesor and ⌘+C. Huge thank you to my food hero, Harold McGee. References: Insanely Good, Leite’s Culinaria, Simply Recipes. Make It Like a Man! is ranked by Feedspot as #13 in the Top 30 Men’s Cooking Blogs.

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