Chicken Fricassée à l'Ancienne

The taste of Fall in a one-pan recipe

Here we are, tomorrow is September!

Can you believe it?

The peak of Summer has flown by. Marc and I enjoyed a short late-summer vacation in Bordeaux and Basque country and we found leaves already falling off trees when we returned back home to Brittany.

Temperatures aren’t dropping just yet, but my mind has definitely switched to fall cooking already. So, I wanted to kick off the start of cozy season with this perfect one-pan autumn recipe for you today!

Chicken Fricassée or “Fricassée de poulet” is a cozy, rustic dish that embodies the essence of French comfort. This one-pot wonder features tender braised chicken and vegetables simmered in a fragrant white wine sauce. The traditional “à l’ancienne” version is enriched with cream for a luxurious texture, while the lighter, no-cream alternative still delivers robust flavor - perfect for both intimate dinners and lively gatherings.

But first, what is a “fricassée” exactly?

A fricassée is halfway between a sautéed dish and a stew. This French classic isn’t a unique recipe but rather the name for a hybrid cooking method for meat, relying on both dry and wet heat.

The idea is to start by sautéing meat in a pan with fat - either butter and/or oil - to get it browned and crisp. Liquid - typically white wine and stock - is then added, and the meat is braised with vegetables and aromatics, until juicy and full-flavored.

Old-fashioned versions of fricassée, known as “à l’ancienne” in French, call for thickening the sauce at the end with heavy cream, making for a rich, creamy dish. Nowadays, modern fricassée recipes often skip the heavy cream to make for a lighter dish – but there’s no denying the old-fashioned take still remains a timeless favorite in France. 

Fricassée is usually made with chicken but can also be made with veal or rabbit. The rest of the recipe is often up to the cook’s discretion – you can add any vegetables or fixings of your choosing. Onions, carrots and mushrooms are the most common, but the possibilities are truly endless.

Now, if you are familiar with French cooking techniques, you may find similarities with the “en blanquette” method, often used for cooking chicken or veal… and you’d be right! This method, consisting of cooking a meat with aromatics and vegetables in a cream-enriched sauce, is quite similar in taste and texture to a fricassée.

But the difference here is that “en blanquette” demands the meat be cooked directly in the sauce, while a fricassée requires browning the meat first in a fat component – usually butter and/or oil. This extra step, if you ask me, imparts a touch more flavor, richness and complexity to the final dish.