Chicken Cacciatore

I love Chicken Cacciatore. It's good by itself, over pasta or rice, but my favorite way is to eat it over mashed potatoes. This is an easy dish to make. I've made it by using rotisserie chicken, whole chicken breasts, and chicken tenderloins. A lot of recipes call for chicken thighs, but I don't like the dark meat. This dish is even good without the meat for a vegetarian dish.

 

I read a long time ago that Cacciatore means "hunter" in Italian. Traditionally it has been made with either chicken or rabbit. While I like a traditional cacciatore, I have modified mine to my taste. It's filled with chunks of tomato and bell pepper, rough chopped sweet onion, thick slices of mushroom, garlic (of course!), and chicken. Serve it over some mashed potatoes or some hot noodles with some garlic bread, and its a heck of a meal. 

The finished product

Start by rough chopping a small sweet onion, a large green pepper, and 8-12 ounces of fresh mushrooms (canned are fine also, just drain them). Finely chop 4 garlic cloves.

Put in a large pot with some olive oil and cook on medium-high heat for about 10-15 minutes. Add 2 teaspoons of Italian seasoning, 1 teaspoon of hot red pepper flakes, and 1/2 a teaspoon of fresh ground black pepper. Stir and then add in 3 cans of diced tomatoes and 1 can of tomato sauce. 

Cook for 10-115 minutes until slightly softened

Let simmer on low to medium heat. At this point, you are able to put raw chicken in and cook it in the sauce, but I like to cook mine separately and shred it before adding. Once the chicken is in, simmer for about an hour and a half on low heat. Stir occasionally to avoid burning. 

Before the chicken, isn't it pretty?

Chicken Cacciatore:

1 large green pepper chopped

1 small sweet onion chopped

8-12 ounces mushrooms sliced 

4 cloves garlic finely minced

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 teaspoons Italian seasoning

1 teaspoon hot red pepper flakes

1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper

3 cans diced tomatoes

1 can tomato sauce

        Either:

3 chicken breasts  -or-

6-8 tenderloins  -or-

rotisserie chicken