‘Gedempte’ Braised Chicken (Yiddish for Well-Cooked)

This is my great-grandmother’s recipe and we have been making it for years in my family.  Gedempte means ‘well-cooked’ in Yiddish and that is the truth – the recipe involves a 5 hour braise so this is a great option for popping in the oven in the morning and taking it out of the oven when you get home from work.  Pieces of chicken are completely topped with onions and during the long cooking time, will make chicken soup in the pot!  Here is the recipe how we have made it for as long as I can remember although I suspect this isn’t really how she made it because it involves ingredients that were not around when she probably first made this.  So, I gave this recipe a real food makeover and I hope that it is close to how she actually made it way back when!

Fake Food (but overall not too bad) Ingredients:

16 chicken breasts, thighs and drumsticks (bone-in, skinless)

8 medium yellow onions, sliced into rings

Kitchen Bouquet (enough to coat chicken) – FAKE FOOD alert!

Paprika (enough to coat chicken)

Salt to taste

1 Tbsp oil

Kitchen Bouquet is a browning liquid that is basically MSG in a bottle (labeled as flavoring).  We certainly wouldn’t use this now…but it got me thinking…what would I replace it with?  I realized all this really needed to add rich flavoring is homemade chicken broth and probably just a few ribs of celery, a carrot and some garlic.  Those add flavor!

Real Food Makeover Ingredients:

2 whole pastured chickens cut up into pieces

8 medium yellow onions, sliced into rings

1 carrot, cut in half but keep pretty large so you can fish it out later

2 celery ribs, cut into large pieces so you can fish them out later

5 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed

1 cup homemade chicken broth

Paprika (enough to coat chicken)

Salt to taste

Directions:

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.  Place chicken in a large Dutch oven and sprinkle with salt and paprika. Cover with the sliced onions and the carrots, celery and garlic.  Pour in the chicken broth.  Cover and cook for 5 hours, checking after a few hours to baste.  The onions will soften and make the most beautiful broth with the chicken.  Remove the chicken from the oven and pan and cook down the remaining sauce as your gravy.

Let me know how it turns out!