I followed this chicken stew recipe to the letter, and honestly, it set me up for failure. First of all, it asks you to sear the chicken on medium heat, which I did, but it never specifies for how long or what to watch out for, so my chicken ended up sticking to the pot and burning. The instructions don’t even mention what to do if that happens, leaving me with a mess before I even got to the vegetables.
Then, it says to sauté the vegetables “until softened”—super vague. What does that even mean? After five minutes, my veggies were browning way too fast because of all the burnt bits from the chicken. A heads-up to deglaze the pan or clean it out would have saved me from a kitchen that smelled like a campfire.
The simmering instructions are equally misleading. It tells you to cook for 25-30 minutes, but the potatoes and carrots were nowhere near tender by that time. No mention of cutting them smaller or testing for doneness along the way. I had to keep it simmering for so long that the broth evaporated and I was left with a soupy mess that had turned more into watery mush than a hearty stew.
And don’t even get me started on the timing for adding the frozen peas. Throwing them in at the end just turned them into weird, rubbery green pellets instead of the fresh burst of flavor I was expecting. The recipe acts like it’s all going to magically come together, but in reality, it leaves you with an undercooked, bland, and watery stew—just not worth the effort.
