Slow Cooker Coq Au Vin recipe is a classic French comfort dish made simple! Rich, slow-cooked, and full of deep flavors with almost no effort.
With Slow Cooker versions of classic recipes like Coq Au Vin, anyone can master the amazing flavors of French food. For another easy take on a traditional recipe, try my Slow Cooker Beef Bourguignon.
Sabrina’s Slow Cooker Coq Au Vin Recipe
French food can come across as intimidating to people (it certainly did to me when I was younger) but it doesn’t have to! Great flavors don’t have to take a ton of time in the kitchen. My Slow Cooker Coq Au Vin has all the red wine braised chicken flavors of the traditional recipe but with way less hands on time.
Recipe Card
Ingredients
- 1 bottle Pinot Noir
- 8 ounces thick-cut bacon , diced
- 5 chicken thighs , skin on and bone-in
- 1 teaspoon Kosher salt , divided
- 1/2 teaspoon coarse ground black pepper
- 1 pound crimini mushrooms , halved
- 3 shallots , quartered
- 3 garlic cloves , minced
- 5 carrots , peeled and cut into 1 inch chunks
- 2 cups chicken broth
- 3 tablespoons tomato paste
- 5 fresh thyme sprigs
- 2 bay leaves
- 1/2 pound white pearl onions , peeled
- 2 tablespoons butter , unsalted
- 2 tablespoons flour
Instructions
- In a medium saucepan on high heat add the bottle of wine and boil for 15 minutes until reduced to half the amount.
- Preheat an aluminum slow cooker insert or cast iron skillet on high heat.
- Cook the bacon until crisp, then remove, leaving at least 2 tablespoons of bacon fat in the pan.
- Season the chicken with half the salt and the pepper.
- Add to the skillet and brown on each side for 4-6 minutes or until browned on each side.
- Remove the chicken from the pan and add in the mushrooms and shallots and lower the heat to medium high.
- Cook for 3 minutes, stir then cook another 3 minutes.
- Into the slow cooker add the mushrooms, shallots, garlic, carrots, half the bacon, broth*, rest of the salt, tomato paste, thyme, bay leaf, pearl onions and the reduced red wine.
- Stir all the ingredients until well mixed, nestle in the pieces of chicken, cover and cook on low for 7 hours.
- In a small bowl mix the butter and flour and add it to the slow cooker and stir.
- Cook an additional hour covered or until thickened.
- Top with remaining bacon and stir before serving.
Nutrition
Want to save this recipe? Create a free account to easily save your favorite recipes
Table of contents
About this Recipe
Another reason I love this recipe is because it makes an easy, yet fancy main dish for a dinner party. Serve it like a stew with some crusty french bread with good butter and a nice bottle of wine. Voila! A delicious meal for a wonderful evening with friends. If you’re serving a large dinner party and want more options, you can try my Chicken Fricassee for another comforting French dish.
Chef’s Note: OG Favorite Recipe!
This recipe was originally part of a three-part series of cooking my favorite French dishes in a slow cooker. Along with this recipe, I made a Slow Cooker Beef Bourguignon and Slow Cooker French Onion Soup. It was an early ode to my days as a college kid and going to a restaurant in the neighborhood that had a three course meal. The first course was an option for French Onion Soup or Vegetable Beef Soup (my version is in the Slow Cooker), and Coq Au Vin was always the main course. Since that early series on my blog, this recipe has become a fan favorite and I hope you enjoy it as much as my readers and I do!
Kitchen Tools
- Slow Cooker: I love a programmable slow cooker or at least using one that will switch to warm automatically. My slow cooker allows me to brown the meat in it first which adds a ton of flavor without having to dirty a pan.
- Cast Iron Skillet: If you don’t have a slow cooker with a stovetop friendly insert use a cast-iron skillet. This workhorse is the most used pan in my kitchen -it’s heavy, keeps heat well and gives the BEST sear ever.
- Quality Stock Base: I almost never buy boxes of broth because I keep the beef, chicken and vegetable version of Better Than Bouillon. It’s a great quality stock concentrate that is unmatched in flavor!
Tips & Tricks
- Don’t overcook the bacon, burnt bacon is bitter and the bacon will not stay crisp in the stew anyway. Get a good crisp, but don’t stress perfection.
- Make sure to brown the chicken well but don’t burn the skin, the more brown the more flavor, plus browning the mushrooms and shallots in the chicken fat is very flavorful.
- Crimini mushrooms add more flavor than white button and shouldn’t be more than a couple cents a pound more expensive. You can use sliced too but cutting in half tends to help them stand out in the end dish better.
- Pearl Onions are totally classic to the dish and I love them. I used fresh and I made a tutorial for how to peel them quickly.
- I call for chicken broth in the recipe but I use chicken base in place of stock. I double the strength of it and add it to either water or more stock/broth.
What to Pair With
This chicken dish can be served like a stew with some bread but it also makes a great main dish similar to pot roast. Serve it over mashed potatoes, white rice or egg noodles to soak up all that amazing cooking sauce. You could also serve it with more traditional French sides like Potato Grait Dauphinois and Green Beans Almondine. And of course you’ll want to round out your French feast with some Creme Brulee!
Frequently Asked Questions
Coq Au Vin is a classic French dish of red wine braised roosters. The older the rooster the the more tough the meat would become so the more necessary the braise would become. The longer the braise the more tender the chicken would become. In today’s reality most people use fryer chicken pieces, but the braising still makes things incredibly tender.
Classically Coq Au Vin is made with a variety of Pinot Noir called Burgundy Wine. These can be expensive, so choose a bottle of Pinot Noir you’d enjoy enough to drink (not the time for two buck chuck) and it will fit the bill perfectly.
Related Posts
More Amazing Braised Meat Dishes
The following pictures were used in previous versions of this post:
Love this recipe was abit daunting at first but after cooking it a few times it gets easier and as I cant get the correct mushroom and onions so switch to baby button and baby round shallots works well perhaps it makes it a bit sweeter.
Your dish looks yummy! Thanks for sharing a photo and good for you in making this recipe work for you! Thank you for the five star vote of confidence!
Do you think I could use bone in chicken breasts instead of thighs?
Yes you can! Keep in mind the chicken breasts will take approximately 15 minutes less to cook through.
What tips do you have for making this ahead of time? I am toying with the idea of making this for my teacher book club (meeting at noon in a classroom) and bringing the crock pot of deliciousness in but am not sure how well it will keep if I make it ahead of time?
Any suggestions?
Prep and start slow cooker 7 hours prior to your book club and you can enjoy Coq Au Vin fresh from the slow cooker! You will have to plug in your slow cooker at school when you arrive so it will be ready at Noon!
We will not have a rating of the recipe until tonight, but want to comment on prep time – prep time is always a pet peeve for us when significantly under estimated (represented) – my wife and I are no strangers to the kitchen, cooking and meal prep, but seriously – 20 minutes – it took 2 of us over 50 minutes to prep this recipe – if one person that would be 5 times the estimated time. We don’t mind spending the time for a really outstanding recipe – but, come on – provide a more realistic estimate.
We accounted for multi-tasking by prepping the veggies as the wine is reducing, and suggest pre-chopped/frozen vegetables to save themselves time in the future? We are happy to add a buffer of prep time to account for home cooks at every skill level. Thank you for trying the recipe. What did you think?
My family loved this! Thanks!
Wow, most delicious stew I have ever had!
So glad you enjoyed the recipe!
So delicious! Was exactly what I was looking for, thank you!
Really helpful info in the main post, too. The only details that were possibly missing to help a noob like me (which luckily my much more experienced partner directed me on!) were:
Taking the stem off the thyme, as I was about to luzz it in, woody stems and all, which apparently wouldn’t have been good?
Was about to use a hand-mixer for the flour and butter but was told just to mash it with a fork into a paste instead.
I literally chuckled while reading your comment. Thank you for that Bobby and your partner is an astute cook in the kitchen! Great points and you’re right, that would have been good information to include in the article. Thanks so much for the 5 star review! I hope you both will try more recipes from the site. If you love slow cooker recipes just type in “slow cooker” in the recipe index browser to see all your options!!
Easy and very tasty.
We loved it!
Thank you
Hi, I was wondering on the red wine. I haven’t tasted alcohol in over 25years and was wondering if there is a non-alcohol substitution for the red wine that would work?
Thank you
Hi Melissa,
I haven’t tested this personally, but some have said that a splash of red wine vinegar can emulate the red wine for a more paleo style recipe.
Let us know what you decided to use and how it turned out!
excellent!
The chicken melts in your mouth. Yummy!
It’s delicious! I cheated and used a whole rotisserie chicken. Will definitely make this again. Thanks for the recipe 🙂
I really would like to do it but, can you tell me what do you serve with that Coq Au Vin, mashed potatoes, spaghetti or noodles. That should be a good yummy meal. Thank you.
Sincerely Jeannine
All of your suggestions for your sides would be yummy!
Looks good
I haven’t made this because I am unsure as how to use the bouillon, is it cubes?? Or is it a powder and she use teaspoon or tablespoons? Then do you omit the stock? Do you add bouillon to water, how much?? Sorry for all the questions, just confused.
Thank you so much
I highly recommend using chicken stock (check out the blog for links) rather than bouillon. The recipe I referenced said use a “big scoop” and I can see why that would be confusing.
I cooked this last night and it was great! I have been cooking for longer than I care to admit, but this tweaks my recipe for Coq au Vin. Always glad to pick up new ideas and hints.
For the butter and flour is it room temp butter or melted butter that you mix with the flour?
room temp
Made this Coq au vin recipe for the first time yesterday. The result was excellent. Very tasty. Will definitely be using this again
This is our go to Christmas Day meal. I’ve made it 4 years in a row and this year’s was the best! Thank you for this delicious recipe!
Is it possible to do the first 7 steps as prep ahead and just finish in the crockpot the day you want to make it?
Can this recipe be made on the high setting to reduce cooking time? Thank you.
Hi Lynda, you can cook this on high to save time. The chicken thighs will stay tender, but I do want to note that the sauce won’t be as well rounded, and the wine notes will be a bit more noticeable. The sauce will still taste great, but I wanted to put that out there so you know.