Maya Angelou's Smothered Chicken

Joe's parents gave us Maya Angelou's cookbook for Christmas. What an amazing woman! The stories she tells of her life alone are worth having.

Her smothered chicken is delicious and easy, though it requires an hour of marinating time, but that's not all that inconvienent when the hour is used to prep a side dish or two. I give the full recipe here, and then add how I adapted it for just two people at the end.

Smothered Chicken
serves 8

Two 3-pound fryer chickens
Juice of 2 lemons (about 1 cup?)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1 cup all-purpose flour
8 Tbs (1 stick) butter
1/2 C vegetable oil
2 medium onions, sliced
1 lb. button mushrooms, sliced
1 clove garlic, minced
2 C. chicken broth

Wash and pat dry chicken. Cut into pieces, and put in a bowl with lemon juice and water to cover. Refrigerate for 1 hour.

Wash lemon water off chicken and seasons with salt and pepper. Dredge pieces in 3/4 cup of the flour.

In a large skillet, fry chicken pieces on high heat in the butter and 1/4 cup of the vegetable oil until dark brown. Remove from skillet.

Add remaining 1/4 cup of flour and 1/4 cup of oil to the skilllet and cook until brown. Add onions, mushrooms, and garlic, stirring constantly. Put chicken back into the skillet. Add broth and water to cover. Turn heat to medium and cook for 25 minutes.

Kitchen Chick's changes:
I used 1 lb of boneless, skinless chicken breast (it's what we had), and cut the amounts for the remaining ingredients in half. Except for the vegetable oil — I used only one quarter of the amount specified. I also diced the onion because Joe doesn't like big chunks of onion.

I usually cook with boneless chicken breasts, so I just chopped the breast into sections and cooked it up per the directions, but with a little less time since the smaller chopped pieces would cook faster that a cut up chicken. When I cook this again, I will slice the chicken breast thin and pound it like scallopini. I think for this kind of recipe that will be a much better method for cooking chicken breast meat, which can easily become too dry.

Comments

[Stuart L. Stone]

I'll have to try this recipe soon. It sounds great.

[Kitchen Chick]

It is really tasty. I took a picture, but decided it wasn't good enough to post. The sauce was a beautiful dark glossy brown, and you can imagine what all that butter and stock does for the flavor. I used turkey stock that I had made with my thanksgiving turkey carcass. If you go the boneless breast route, I do recommend pounding out first.

[Laura]

This recipe is soooo good, and very addictive. I cook it once a month for sunday dinner!

[Laura]

This recipe is soooo good, and very addictive. I cook it once a month for sunday dinner!

[Laura]

This recipe is soooo good, and very addictive. I cook it once a month for sunday dinner!

[Faith]

I googled "smothered chicken" and I came up with your website. I'm a vegetarian, so I made this recipe, substituting a veggie, faux chicken product called "Quorn." I also halved it, and used the frozen shitake mushrooms I had on hand. It came out pretty good-- although the cooking time is way less. I cooked it a bit too long and the oil separated from the flour, and so the sauce wasn't creamy, but the flavor was still great. Thanks for posting it!

Faith