How should I tweak this Coq au Vin recipe?

If you are going to add celery and garlic, add it with the carrots, and bay leaves after the broth.

When you add the wine, let it bubble and reduce a bit, then add the stock and tomato paste.

Saute the mushrooms in a little oil in separate pan, add in last few minutes.

You haven't added any ground black pepper - add some to your flour mix when you bag the thighs, then some again when you do the carrots etc.
Check seasoning at the end, add more S&P if needed. This dish can take quite a bit of seasoning. The chicken and mushrooms love it.

Why boneless thighs? They taste much sweeter with bone in, IMO.

Meaning no offence, I can't imagine many things worse than faux, "quick" and "healthy" coq au vin made with boneless chicken breasts. It's simply not coq au vin. If you want to saute some chicken breasts, make a pan reduction and return the breasts to the pan -- that's one thing. Coq au vin is something else entirely.

Sorry to be so harsh,
BDL

With mushrooms, they are best cooked separately then added a couple of minutes before dish is finished. They can get very bland and rubbery, losing their unique flavour.

Saute them once only in a separate pan - don't add them with carrots etc.

How much garlic...depends how much you like it! For me - I would use 3 or 4 cloves.

As BDL says - its not a true Coq au Vin, but a chicken stew really. I'd stay with the thighs personally. They are tastier, can take more cooking, and as a bonus they are less expensive.

BDL is 100%correct. True coq is made with a whole young chicken cut up with the bone. By useing breast alone 1. It will be tough because of cooking time. 2. You will not get the full flavour of chicken. Also you can use plain mushrooms as this is what original recipe used.. What you are preparing is a takeoff on the classic dish.

From a non-professional's viewpoint that reiterates BDL's and Ed's position on this, I think if you want to make dishes that follow some dietary restriction (whether imposed by a doctor, like in diabetes, or are self-imposed like vegetarianism or extreme dieting) it seems to me you have to just invent new and delicious recipes.

Having cooked for vegetarians for years, i never used any of the fake-meat products available. I made stuff that is essentially vegetarian. It tasted good even for a carnivore like me. (And since meat was a luxury in most places in the world, there is an incredible repertory of wonderful non-meat dishes to choose from that supply complete protein.)

Not to say that you can't reduce the fat a little in a traditional dish and maybe come up with something reasonable (sometimes even better, if the traditional dish is literally floating in oil because it evolved from a time when everyone's main concern was getting ENOUGH calories). Or that you can;t occasionally try to reproduce a sort-of version of a dish if you really cannot ever eat a certain ingredient for reasons of your health (diabetes, for instance or celiac disease).

But it seems to me that it would be better to eat a small amount of a good dish accompanied by a large amount of NATURALLY low-fat or low-starch dishes.

Also, in the land of the coq-au-vin or of pasta, just how many overweight people do you see? Maybe they're doing something right. In the land of "lo-fat" and "lite" and saccharine and aspartame how many do you see? As ready-made frozen meals and crap junk food snacks appeared in Italy, so also did the lo-fat and the lite.

The real question, then, is what can you do with chicken breasts to make them palatable! (that is, without frying them or covering them with butter). Frankly, I really don;t know.

I agree with most of your points Siduri - a little bit of what you like is good for you :)

Except for the part I quoted...there's lots of ways I like - most of them follow marinading, so there's the extra step there. Then a very short cooking time, serving it up pronto. Or in an oriental type stir fry after velveting them. Right heat wok, the chicken strips take about 30 seconds. And as a bonus in this sort of cooking, many veg can be added so your amount of protein is pretty small.

The OP is looking for quick healthy recipes - Coq au Vin is probably not a good starting point. Poaching the breasts would be a good idea in a nicely seasoned boullion, and make a low fat sauce to go with, lots of steamed veg, bit of starch...

Grilling lends itself to marinated chicken breasts - again, you've got to be careful not to overdo the cooking. Personally I love marinating them diced, leave overnight, onto skewers, then onto a bbq (or can be done under the broiler or even in an oven).

Hi DC sunshine,
Personally, i can't imagine using chicken breasts when i could find legs, except when i'm really lazy and don't want to debone them (if the dish calls for deboned) (and sometimes i am lazy). But i think poached chicken breasts is so depressing, i can't imagine any sauce that would make it not taste like eating in a convent dedicated to mortifying the flesh. But i do have pretty extreme opinions. I think someone pushed the idea that chicken breasts were "healthy" and so we find them all over the place, and maybe because they use the dark meat for the tasty dishes and needed a way to sell us the tasteless breasts!

Hey Siduri,

I love the way you describe poached chicken breasts - that's funny :) I much prefer the dark meat...if we're having roast chicken, I always take the leg quarter, and if we're making crumbed chicken, I won't use the breast.

Was just trying to make suggestions for the OP if they wanted to use breasts only.

Cheers - DC