Chicken Thighs with Mushrooms and Red Onion in Sauce

When I was a child, buying fresh button mushrooms in a store was hard, there simply weren’t any. Apparently, mass production of button mushrooms began not so long ago. I remember the first time we bought half a kilo of fresh mushrooms and made a tasty sauté for dinner: chicken with mushrooms. The recipe has hardly changed since, just like the recipe for chicken fricassee.

Times change at an amazing speed. Now it’s hard to find wild mushrooms; in our region there has been a drought for years. But fresh button mushrooms are plentiful. The button mushroom is an amazing fungus. First, it is a gilled mushroom, and its name, champignon, simply means “mushroom” in French. In stores the fruiting bodies are usually small, 3-5 cm, although they can grow as big as a saucer. The caps are smooth or slightly scaly, in colors from white to brown. Store-bought mushrooms contain 20 amino acids, including some that are essential for humans. Besides, as an acquaintance of mine says, mushrooms are all healthy protein. Actually, mushrooms are mostly water, which is why they shrink so much when dried. But button mushrooms do contain a lot of protein and trace elements.

From a culinary point of view, button mushrooms are an exceptional ingredient for tasty dishes. Everyone always praises the aroma of wild mushrooms. And of course they are right. But if button mushrooms are cooked properly, the aroma is just as good, you only have to make an effort. Since edible button mushrooms can even be eaten raw, they don’t need any special or long cooking. I’ve even seen recipes somewhere with completely raw mushrooms. They are also excellent baked under cheese, which makes a very tasty mushroom julienne.

Button mushrooms go wonderfully with meat, poultry and vegetables. Usually we stew or fry dishes with mushrooms. Frying is preferable. The temperature of oil in a pan is much higher than that of boiling water. The mushrooms brown, and the crust keeps the mushrooms’ own juice in. Combined with other ingredients, such as vegetables, meat or chicken, the mushrooms come out tasty and not watery.

Chicken with mushrooms is cooked on this principle. First the chicken is fried, then it is stewed with vegetables, like chicken with vegetables. The dish can be made with any chicken meat, just like chicken chakhokhbili. Some people may want the chicken as a whole bird. In principle, you can try cooking it in the oven. But it is much more convenient to use chicken chopped into pieces or, even better, a set of thighs, wings or fillets, which are sold separately, such as drumsticks for chicken with potatoes or chicken with rice.

Chicken with mushrooms is an easy dish to make. It cooks quickly, given the short time needed to cook the chicken and mushrooms. It also uses only affordable ingredients, like chicken with apple. The basic recipe is stewed chicken with vegetables, and next to it in this series is chicken fillet stewed with vegetables in the oven.