Chicken Cacciatore Like It Should Be: Braised Hard, Sauced Deep, Piled on Creamy Polenta

davidcdouglass
Jan 25
4 min read

Chicken Cacciatore with Chicken Thighs

What to make for dinner on a blustery winter day where the snowfall has sent otherwise mundane people into a grocery shopping panic not seen since the Pandemic Toilet Paper Fiasco of 2020?

Chicken cacciatore is one of those dishes that doesn’t ask for your attention—it earns it by showing up honest, unpretentious, and smelling like someone cared enough to stick around the stove.

This is hunter’s food. Not camouflage-and-rifle romanticism, but the kind of hunting that involves digging through a pantry, finding tomatoes, wine, garlic, and deciding to do the right thing with a chicken instead of rushing it into oblivion.

Chicken Caccitore over Creamy Polenta served with Roasted Briccoli Florets

The bird gets browned properly—skin crackling, fat rendering, little brown bits forming on the pan like a promise. None of this pale, steamed nonsense.

Then come the aromatics: onions slumping into sweetness, garlic doing what garlic does best, anchoring the whole operation in sanity. Tomatoes follow—crushed, canned, unapologetic—along with wine, herbs, maybe olives if you’re feeling generous, maybe peppers if you’re feeling loud. It simmers, slowly, patiently, until the chicken relaxes into the sauce like it finally understands its purpose.

This is not fancy food. There’s no foam. No tweezers. It’s messy, red-sauced, and deeply forgiving. You can screw it up a little and it’ll still love you back.

The flavors are blunt but harmonious: acid, fat, salt, heat, all pulling in the same direction. It tastes like a long afternoon, like a kitchen with the windows fogged and a wooden spoon resting where it damn well pleases.

Serve it with pasta, polenta, crusty bread—whatever helps you mop the plate clean. Chicken cacciatore doesn’t care about trends. It’s been here forever, and it’ll still be here when we finally remember that simple, well-made food is the whole point.

Ingredients

4 to 6 chicken thighs
2 tsps Kosher salt
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper, plus more to taste
3 tablespoons Extra Virgin Olive Oil, divided
1 small onion, thinly sliced
1 small carrot, minced
2 ribs celery, minced
3-4 garlic cloves, chopped
½ cup red wine that you would drink
2-3 sprigs fresh thyme
1-2 sprigs fresh rosemary
1 28-ounce can crushed San Marzano tomatoes. (If you use whole canned tomatoes just crush the tomatoes in the pan.)
1 Tbsp tomato paste
1-2 tsp anchovie paste
½ cup olives and/or capers (optional)

Instructions

Sear chicken and start the sauce:

Sprinkle the chicken thighs with salt and pepper.
Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a large heavy sauté pan or cast iron skillet on medium-high heat.
Add in the chicken and sear on both sides until golden, about 5 minutes each side. (Sear the chicken in batches if it doesn't fit into your pan.)
Remove seared chicken from skillet and set aside.
Sauté the onion until transparent.
Add in the carrots, celery and stir to combine with the onions.
Add in garlic and cook until fragrant.
Add in the olives and herbs; cook for 5 minutes until vegetables cook and soften a bit.
Adjust seasoning
Add the wine, with a wooden spoon scraping any bits from the bottom of the pan, and simmer until reduced by half, about 3 minutes.
Add tomatoes and stir to combine. With your wooden spoon, break up the tomatoes while you stir them.
Return chicken pieces to the skillet and continue and coat them with the sauce.
Partially cover the pan with a lid and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. (Add a little bit of water if the sauce is thickening too much.)
Continue simmering over medium-low heat until the chicken is just cooked through, about 30 minutes for the breast pieces, and 20 minutes for the thighs.

Simmer until chicken is cooked:

Remove the lid for the rest of the cooking, which is approximately 25 minutes. Keep simmering and stirring occasionally until the chicken is tender and the sauce has thickened. The chicken is ready when it's fall off the bone tender and reaches an internal temperature of 165F / 74C . Chicken breasts will take longer to cook. Using tongs, transfer the chicken to a platter.

This Creamy Polenta is from Chef Michael Lomonaco’s 21 Cookbook. I have not asked for permission to publish this although it can be found with an easy Google search.

The fact of the matter is, I have disclosed who’s recipe it is. And to be perfectly honest, if our microscopic little website were to be found by Chef Lomonaco and his people and told to take it down, I would happily count that as a win.

Creamy Herbed Polenta with a Sorig of Thyme

Ingredients

1 cup cornmeal
1/2 stick (4 tablespoons) unsalted butter
3 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan cheese
3 tablespoons chopped fresh herbs, such as thyme, parsley and chives
2 cups whole milk
1 cup cold water

Directions

Combine the milk, water, salt, and cornmeal in a 2 or 3 quart heavy bottomed saucepan.
Stir with a whisk to eliminate any lumps.
Heat just to a boil (but without scorching). Reduce the heat to very low and simmer the polenta for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon.

(If, near the end of the cooking, the polenta is becoming too thick and heavy to stir, add one or more tablespoons of cold water to loosen the mixture enough to be able to stir it, and to maintain a creamy consistency.)