A lot of folks think if a recipe is French, it must be complicated. But that’s not the case here.
The traditional recipe (which the French call Poulet aux Quarante Gousses d’Ail) starts with a whole chicken, cut into pieces. We chose to use chicken thighs and legs because they are easily available and affordable, not to mention our favorite parts of the animal. We also decided to bolster the recipe by adding baby potatoes and mushrooms resulting in a complete dinner in one pan (or two if you’re making a big batch).
Makes 2 hotel pans.
40 Clove Garlic Chicken Ingredients
- 18-20# Chicken, bone-in, skin on (we used thighs and legs)
- 5-6# Baby creamer potatoes, cleaned and halved the larger ones
- 5 lbs Baby bella mushrooms (or mushroom of choice), cleaned and bite-sized
- 80+/- Whole, cleaned garlic cloves
- 3 Large Vidalia onions, cleaned, and large diced
- ½ Cup vegetable oil
- 1 Cup butter, divided
- 2 Cups white wine
- 1/2 Cup + 2 Tbs flour
- 6 Cups chicken stock
- 6-8 sprigs of fresh thyme
- Kosher salt, to taste (tt)
40 Clove Garlic Chicken Preparation
Preheat RTV705UV to the following program:
Vapor Temp – 200°F
Air Temp – 350°F
Vegetables
- Mise en place or “everything in its place.”
– Clean and prep all the vegetables
– Half the baby potatoes
– Half the mushrooms
– Cut the large onions
– Slice large garlic cloves in half
– Have all other ingredients out and within arm’s reach
Chicken
2. Preheat the pan with a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil.
3. Pat chicken skin dry with a towel and season with salt.
4. Carefully add chicken, skin side down, to preheated pan to sear.
5. Transfer to hotel pan once a golden sear has been reached, seared skin side up. For this recipe, you’ll be using two full hotel pans. – Pour out the searing oil every 1-2 batches of chicken and reserve.
6. Once all the chicken is seared, it’s time to prepare the sauce and build the pan for roasting.
40 Clove Garlic Chicken Sauce
7. Remove the oil from the last batch of chicken into the reserve, leaving a rich fond perfect for deglazing.
8. Over medium heat, carefully pour in the white wine, using a utensil to scrape the fond off the bottom of the pan and allow it to reduce by half.
9. Remove pan from burner.
10. In another pan, add the reserved seared chicken oil PLUS ½ cup of butter. Allow butter to melt.
11. Add the flour to create a roux, stir continuously to smooth out, and cook to a blonde stage, season with salt.
12. Once the roux is ready, carefully pour in chicken stock, as well as the reduced wine mixture.
13. Stir until smooth and allow to simmer until thickened and ready to use.
Watch the recipe process here…
It All Comes Together
14. While the sauce is simmering, build out the chicken pans by layering in all the vegetables; mushrooms, potatoes, onions, garlic, and chicken. Top with fresh thyme, season with salt, and stud the pan with the remaining ½ cup of butter.
15. Once the sauce is complete, evenly distribute the sauce between the two pans.
16. Place pans into the preheated RTV and roast for about an hour, or until the chicken is at a safe temperature (at least 165°F) and the vegetables are tender.
17. Remove the pan from the oven when everything is complete. Plate, and serve.
The key to making a large batch recipe like this is to have the mise en place at the ready. It is front-end prep-heavy, but once the pans go into the oven, it’s time to clean up the mess or move on to another task. You could forego the pre-searing step and succumb to your inner sloth BUT you’ll miss out on all that Maillard browning that helps build complex layers of flavor. In other words, it’s worth the work!
If you think “40 cloves of garlic? That’s too much garlic!,” then you’d be wrong. The garlic mellows out in the cooking process and the whole dish benefits from the quantity, besides you can scale up or down the amount of garlic to suit your tastes.
