Larry Greenly wrote:It's been years, decades, since I've made coq au vin. Nowadays, the worry is about fat. Okay, chefs, what are your thoughts about removing the skin from the chicken and when, or not at all? Your thoughts, please.
I am a chef and I've played on one television and in books.
I am a proponent of always cooking the chicken with the skin intact. ( I do have a couple of dishes where I cook skinless breasts - mostly for presentation's sake.) *So* much of the flavor is lost when one removes the skin and attendant fat, particularly in the relatively bland tasting factory produced chickens one sees in the supermarkets. Skin-on, the chicken bastes itself. The basic poulet saute (which, after all, is how one begins coq au vin) really needs the skin.
If one has a problem with fat in the diet, one can always remove the skin after the cooking.
I do, though, think bacon works fine in this dish - but never in cacciatoria where I infinitely prefer the salt pork.