Slow-cooker coq au vin – the easy version

Slow-cooker coq au vin delivers tender juicy chicken with fabulous flavours and minimum effort on your part. Serve with sweet potato mash and vegetables for a meal that will be requested time and time again.

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Coq au vin

Coq au vin is a classic French dish, consisting of tender, juicy chicken pieces cooked with mushrooms, bacon and shallots in a red wine gravy. It’s normally simmered long and slow on the stove, but I’ve given it a new twist and used my slow-cooker (or crockpot) to make it a 90% hands-off meal.

Just because it’s a French classic, doesn’t mean it’s complicated to make. Quite the opposite in fact. Coq au vin takes just 15 minutes to prepare, then it’s into the slow-cooker for a few hours to turn into a mouth-wateringly delicious meal. (To be perfectly honest, coq au vin is really just a rich, savoury chicken stew)!

It’s easy enough to make for a quick mid-week meal for the family. And even though it does contain red wine, the alcohol evaporates during the cooking process, leaving only the rich flavours behind.

You can also serve this for an elegant dinner party, when you’re looking to impress, but don’t want to spend too much time in the kitchen.

You can’t really go wrong with this coq au vin recipe. You can use whatever cut of chicken you prefer. Skin-on / skin-off, bone-in, bone-out – the choice is yours. I like to use skinless de-boned chicken thighs but it doesn’t really matter. If you are cooking for a crowd you might want to cut an entire chicken into pieces and use that.

As far as vegetables go, I like to use small shallots and baby mushrooms. Some people like to add chopped carrots, but I prefer to cook my vegetables separately. Once again, it’s up to you.

And once your coq au vin is ready, all you have to do is ladle it over a pile of creamy mashed potatoes (I like sweet potato mash), add a side dish of vegetables and sit back and wait for the compliments.

What you will need

Equipment

Of course, you will need a slow-cooker. This particular model has a timer, which is handy if you want to go out and have the slow-cooker switch itself off once the time is up. My model doesn’t have a timer, so I have to remember to set an alarm to remind me to switch it off.

You will also need a frying pan for browning the meat and vegetables before they go in the slow-cooker. You can skip the browning step, but it does add an extra depth of colour to the finished dish, and is worth the extra few minutes it takes.

Ingredients

Chicken – I used deboned, skinless chicken thighs. You can leave the skin on if you prefer, and also use pieces of chicken still on the bone. Depending on your appetite, you will probably need 2 pieces of chicken per person.

Shallots – I prefer using whole baby pickling onions (or pearl onions), but I couldn’t find any in my local supermarket so I went with banana shallots which I cut in half. You could also use a brown or yellow onion, cut into quarters and separated into individual petals.

Mushrooms – these are baby mushrooms. You can leave the smaller ones whole and cut any larger ones into halves or quarters.

Bacon lardons – lardons are just pieces of bacon that have been cured and cut into strips. If you can’t find lardons, just chop up a few slices of streaky bacon and use that instead.

Red wine – coq au vin is traditionally made with Burgundy which is quite full-bodied. You can substitute this with any full-bodied red wine such as Shiraz, Pinotage, Rioja or Pinot Noir. I used a South African Pinotage which is sold at Lidl in the UK. It’s cheap as chips too. At only £3.89 a bottle it’s really good value. And as always, when cooking with wine, remember my adage ‘if you wouldn’t drink it, don’t add it to food’!

Stock – if you have fresh chicken stock you can use that, otherwise use a good quality stock cube (such as Oxo) dissolved in a cup of boiling water.

Butter – this is used for browning the chicken and vegetables. It gives an extra depth of flavour to the dish so I would recommend using butter for browning. If you want to be a bit healthier, you could use olive oil instead.

Cornflour – used for thickening the gravy at the end of the cooking process.

Fresh thyme – coq au vin really benefits from the addition of a sprig of fresh thyme. You can use dried thyme, but be careful not to use too much and overpower the dish. Dried thyme is much stronger than fresh thyme so you won’t need much if you’re using dried.

What to do

This recipe will serve 4 people.

**You can get the complete list of ingredients and full instructions for making coq au vin in the crockpot on the printable recipe card at the end of this post**

Preparation

• Pat the chicken with paper towels to remove any excess moisture, then trim away any excess skin (if you don’t have skinless chicken) and any visible fat.
• Peel the shallots and if they are quite large, cut them in half.
• Peel and mince the garlic.
• If you are using bacon rashers rather than lardons, cut the bacon into small pieces.
• Wipe the mushrooms with a damp cloth to remove any specks of dirt, and cut any larger mushrooms into halves or quarters.
• If you are adding other vegetables (such as carrots), peel them and cut them into bite-sized pieces. You may need to par-boil hard vegetables like carrots to give them a head start on the cooking process. You don’t want to end up with undercooked vegetables.

Assemble in the slow-cooker

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How to serve coq au vin

Transfer the coq au vin to a serving dish and optionally garnish with more fresh thyme.

Serve with a dish of creamy mashed potatoes (or a mixture of potatoes and sweet potatoes) and your favourite vegetables.

Here are a few ideas for vegetable sides:

• Baked cauliflower and broccoli cheese
• Glazed carrots
• Creamy leek and brussels sprouts bake
• Buttered cabbage and leeks with mustard seeds
• Baby marrow with tomato and onion
• Mashed green beans

Tips and FAQ

Save for later

If you’d like to try my slow-cooker coq au vin for yourself, why not save the recipe to one of your Pinterest boards so you can find it later. Just click on the image below.

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Other recipes

If you like this coq au vin, you may also like to try some of my other slow-cooker recipes:

• Slow-cooker bolognese sauce
• Slow-cooker Mongolian roast beef
• Slow-cooker lamb shanks in red wine gravy
• Slow-cooker beef topside with horseradish
• Slow-cooker beef Trinchado
• Slow-cooker beef and kidney stew

The recipe

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