Alcohol cooks off, so you get the flavor and none of the tipsy. The dish is now made with chicken since it is the most convenient and readily available meat but the original dish was made with rabbit and other game meats obtained during and after a hunt. Use anything you have available as long as its a dry white. Dark meat chicken (legs and thighs work best in this recipe, but if you prefer the whole chicken you can use that as well) Traditionally it was prepared in the fall when hunters would bring home game meat and the mushrooms they foraged in the woods while hunting.

The Italian version is called pollo alla cacciatora. In French, it is known as chicken chasseur. We’ve grown to love Nona’s version which does contain tomatoes and sauce and can be topped with a little parmesan cheese at the table if you like. Hunter’s chicken is a dish with roots in two European countries France and Italy.

The more traditional recipe doesn’t contain tomato sauce, and the chicken and spices form a brownish pan gravy which is just as delicious as the ‘americanized’ version of tomato gravy. With its stew-like sauce, this dish is perfect for the transition from winter to spring, when chickens head out to pasture and can feed freely on the first of. The dish also receives flavor from the addition of garlic, bell peppers and onions.

Most commonly used spices used are thyme, parsley, and oregano, as well as salt and pepper. This traditional version of chicken cacciatore is a combination of chicken, mushrooms and spices. Wine being readily available and a drink of choice made the inclusion of wine to the recipe perfect even for the hunters. Early recipes might have been made with pheasant, rabbit or chicken, and each recipe was adapted for those who might be traveling or hunting for several days and would require an easy to prepare recipe for outside cooking. Chicken cacciatore is a classic Italian dish, which roughly translates as hunter’s stew.

Chicken hunter stew