Cider-Braised Chicken with Apples, Bacon, and Sage Recipe (2024)

Chicken Legs
Apple
Bacon
Sage

Chicken braised in cider with apples, bacon, and sage is the perfect dish for fall.

Yvonne Ruperti

Yvonne Ruperti is a food writer, recipe developer, former bakery owner, and cookbook author. She is also an adjust professor of baking at the Culinary Institute of America in Singapore.

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Updated November 21, 2022

Why It Works

Simmering the chicken in a flavorful broth ensures tender meat and creates a sauce perfect for smothering mashed potatoes or noodles.
Apples, smoky bacon, and fresh sage provide the perfect flavors.
Use a medium-dry hard apple cider for complex apple flavor without adding more sweetness.
A Dutch oven provides more space for the chicken to braise and for the fat in the chicken skin to render.

When you want to ensure that your chicken is moist, a braise is the way to go. Braising chicken—gently simmering it in a flavorful broth—doesn't just result in falling-off-the-bone tender meat, but it also creates a sauce perfect for smothering a side, such as mashed potatoes or noodles. The chicken (usually thigh or whole leg) is browned first, and while the crispness achieved is mitigated in the moist environment of the pot, the browning step adds flavor and helps render the chicken fat, giving the chicken that sought-after melt-in-your-mouth texture.

Flavors

For this braise, I combined flavors that are perfect for fall and pair well with chicken: apples, tangy whole-grain mustard, smoky bacon, and fresh sage. The apple comes twofold in the sauce and the braising liquid. First, I sautéed slices of fresh, sweet-tart Granny Smiths until soft and caramelized and reserved them to mix into the sauce at the end. Second, I used hard apple cider for the braising liquid. (I thought about using apple cider but decided it would be too sweet.) The medium-dry, 4.5% ABV cider I chose had the flavor I was looking for: lightly sweet fruitiness balanced by fermentation.

Method

Braising is simple. Cover and gently simmer whatever you're cooking in just enough liquid to cook, not enough to submerge it. The cook is low and slow, which makes the meat extremely tender. It's the perfect method to get the most out of that cheap cut of meat. And although chicken doesn't need hours to become tender, braising is the best way to get the great flavors in your sauce deep into the meat. There are usually a few steps before and after this type of cooking method—brown the meat, sauté the aromatics, finish the sauce in the end—but it's all done in one pot.

A braise can be performed on the stovetop or in the oven. While the oven is regarded as having the most even heat because it encompasses the pot, I usually reserve the oven for long braises with big hunks of meat. For the chicken legs in this recipe, the stovetop is sufficient and easier. I try to avoid stove-to-oven moves when I can.

Dutch Ovens Rule

Because the chicken easily fit into my straight sided skillet, I assumed it would be a done deal as far as the cooking vessel was concerned. After browning up some pretty damn nice crispy chicken skin, I also resigned myself to the reality that I'd be sacrificing crackly skin for moistness. But after the chicken was done cooking, sliding off the lid revealed that the tops of the chicken legs were soggy. The lid was just too close to the chicken, allowing moist droplets to drip from the lid right onto the skin.

For my second try, I used my deeper Dutch oven. Even though it was still a moist environment, there was more space to breathe and the chicken skin rendered perfectly.

The finished sauce—tangy, sweet, smoky, and full of apples—is delicious in its own right, especially over mashed potatoes.

From start to finish the whole dish takes about an hour, making it feasible for a special weeknight meal.

October 2013

Recipe Details

Cider-Braised Chicken With Apples, Bacon, and Sage Recipe

Active60 mins

Total60 mins

Serves4 servings

Ingredients

4 whole chicken legs(about 2 pounds)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, cut into 1/8-inch thick slices
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 slices bacon, finely chopped
2 shallots, minced (about 3 tablespoons)
2 cups hard apple cider(see note)
2 tablespoons whole-grain mustard
3 sprigs plus 1 tablespoon fresh sage leaves, divided
1 tablespoon heavy cream
1 tablespoon flour

Directions

Pat chicken legs dry with paper towel and season with salt and pepper. Heat oil in Dutch oven over medium-high heat until just smoking. Place chicken into pot, skin side down, and cook until well browned, about 5 minutes (use oil screen if splattering). Turn over and cook another 3 minutes. Transfer chicken to plate and pour off all but 2 tablespoons fat.
Add apples and cook, stirring, until just softened and caramelized, about 5 minutes. Transfer apples to bowl and reserve. Add bacon and shallots to pot and cook until shallots have softened and bacon has rendered but not crisped, about 3 minutes (reduce heat if browning too quickly).
Whisk in cider, scraping up browned bits on bottom of pot. Whisk in mustard, 3/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper. Nestle chicken (skin side up) and sage sprigs into liquid, and bring to a simmer. Cover, reduce heat to low, and gently simmer until chicken is cooked through and very tender, about 40 minutes (adjust heat to keep at gentle simmer).
Transfer chicken to serving plate. Whisk cream into cooking liquid and simmer 1 minute. Transfer 1/2 cup of the cooking liquid to a small bowl and whisk in flour, then return to pot. Bring to a boil to thicken. Stir in apples and chopped sage, and season to taste. Serve with mashed potatoes or egg noodles.

Notes

I used a medium-dry 4.5% ABV hard apple cider. For an alcohol-free substitute, use 3/4 cup apple cider and 1 1/4 cups chicken broth. Serve this dish with mashed potatoes or egg noodles.

Special Equipment

Dutch oven

Nutrition Facts (per serving)
554	Calories
29g	Fat
26g	Carbs
45g	Protein

Show Full Nutrition Label

Nutrition Facts
Servings: 4
Amount per serving
Calories	554
% Daily Value*
Total Fat 29g	37%
Saturated Fat 8g	42%
Cholesterol 234mg	78%
Sodium 1025mg	45%
Total Carbohydrate 26g	9%
Dietary Fiber 3g	12%
Total Sugars 18g
Protein 45g
Vitamin C 37mg	183%
Calcium 45mg	3%
Iron 3mg	14%
Potassium 733mg	16%
*The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a food serving contributes to a daily diet. 2,000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice.

(Nutrition information is calculated using an ingredient database and should be considered an estimate.)