Braised Chicken Thighs with Collards and Mushrooms

Serves 4

This could easily be a very economical company dish—but it’s good for your lonesome as well as for your family. Chicken thighs really are very economical to buy and frankly, though I know they are dark meat and have skin, I feel are much better tasting than your almost tasteless skinless chicken breasts—which by the way have become terribly pricey. Collards are so good for you but if you insist, you can use kale, spinach or some other kind of green. You can also introduce carrots in this dish to give it some color jazz. I really like this served over rice or some pasta, however the scales were not kind to me this morning and our fresh corn is in, so that’s the way I had it—sided with an ear of corn. I used my large cast iron skillet for this and it was perfect for the cooking of this dish.

Ingredients:

1. 8 chicken thighs with skin
2. 1-8-oz basket of mushrooms
3. 4 or 5 garlic cloves—cut in half
4. 1/4 C. balsamic vinegar or red wine but I like the vinegar and save the wine for the drinking
5. 1 Tblsp. butter
6. 3 cups chicken broth
7. S&P to taste
8. 1 bunch of collards (or some sort of similar greens) washed well, rough chopped and include the better part of the stems also rough chopped.

 

Directions:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 400.
2. After having rinsed and pat dried the chicken thighs, brown them over medium high heat in the skillet. When they are nice, crisp and brown, remove them to a platter.
3. Add 1 Tblsp. butter to the skillet and over medium heat brown the mushrooms until they become moist and glistened; add the garlic and keep on stirring. Then add the vinegar or wine and keep simmering till the liquid is reduced by half. S&P to taste.
4. Place the chicken thighs back in the skillet and add the chicken broth. The broth should ALMOST reach the top of the thighs, but it should NOT cover the thighs. You want them to remain crispy.
5. Place the skillet in the oven and bake uncovered for 45 minutes to 60 minutes (depending on the size of the thighs). At 45 minutes, test the thighs to see if they are done because you don’t want them to dry out.
6. When the thighs are done, take the skillet out of the oven, remove the thighs to a warm platter. Place the skillet on the stove top over medium heat and add the greens. The collards will take longer to cook than spinach. The collards take about 10 minutes of cooking where as if you use spinach, that should take just a couple of minutes. Just to make sure everything is equally heated, you can add at the last minute the thighs back to your pan and finally after the thighs are really warm, place the mushrooms and greens on top of each thigh and keep on a low heat for several minutes more.