Retro Recipe: Apple Wine Chicken

There’s nothing I love more than finding old gems of recipes and reinventing them to suit modern tastes and preparations. But here's the thing with old recipes: They often lack critical details and the ingredients are oftentimes no longer items we cook with today. For instance, the original recipe for this chicken (found in my grandma’s spiral recipe notebook!) bore the vague instructions, “heat until chicken is done.” These days, we want our recipes to be more exact and say “simmer until chicken is brown and cooked all the way through” or we would give an exact time for cooking.  

Gram’s recipe also called for apple jelly, which isn't as common these days. With that said, after a little hunting, I found it at my regular, non-specialty grocer in the jelly and jam section. (If you can’t find it near you, you could also forgo the apply jelly and substitute it for more apples. Or make your own apple jelly from scratch!) Also perplexing was the fact that no real apples were called for in the original recipe. I added some in because, what would apple chicken be without the presence of actual apples?

We served up this dish with long grain white rice and topped each serving with a sprig of thyme and a generous ladle of the silky sauce and enjoyed a glass of chardonnay alongside. We hope you’ll enjoy this beautiful fall meal, made with little fuss and luxurious results.