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Every once in a while, you’ll have a meal that sticks with you, for more than just wistful nostalgia. It’s food that reinvigorates, inspires, and has you wanting to share it with everyone. For Ina Garten, one such meal was the coq au vin she once had decades ago in a campsite in France, which in turn led to her learning Julia Child’s recipe for the dish.
When Garten was a guest on the Your Mama’s Kitchen podcast with Michelle Norris, she recounted a trip to Europe she and her husband once took when they were both young and relatively broke. During a stop in France, they drove up to the two-star campsite they’d be staying at and were offered a fresh serving of coq au vin by the woman who ran the campsite. Garten brought it back to their tent, heated it up for dinner, and fell in love.
“I just thought, ‘I need to know how to make this. This is amazing,'” she shared on the podcast. Since then, coq au vin has been a fixture in Garten’s repertoire. She first learned how to make it by following Child’s recipe, and has since adapted it to add her personal touch. Her dish today is the product of three great inspirations: the rustic campsite coq au vin, the legendary Julia Child, and her own personal tastes. It’s a recipe worth learning, especially if you’re a fan of Ina Garten’s genius 10-recipe rule.
The Julia Child recipe that inspired Ina Garten’s coq au vin
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If you want to follow in Ina Garten’s footsteps and learn how to make Julia Child’s coq au vin first, you can find it in “The French Chef Cookbook.” Child was, for decades, America’s most famous advocate for French cuisine — and also, rather surprisingly, a spy for the early CIA — and happily shared her recipes both on television and in writing.
Child’s coq au vin is hearty stew bearing the rich flavors of browned chicken, bacon, mushrooms, and onions, simmered in a broth of beef and tomato paste, and fortified by a healthy amount of red wine. The liquid is then reduced and further thickened with butter and flour, resulting in a dish that warms your bones and fills your belly. It’s easy to see why the iconic French staple was Julia Child’s favorite chicken dish, and why it left such a strong impression on Garten. Garten’s recipe for coq au vin changes up a handful of things from Child’s, but the inspiration behind her version still shines through.
How Ina Garten gave Julia Child’s coq au vin her own spin
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Cooking can be a deeply personal matter, which is why you’ll often see two chefs have wildly different takes on the same dish. In fact, there’s a significant difference between Julia Child’s and Ina Garten’s beef bourguignon recipes, despite both being fans of French cuisine. While Child’s recipe may have provided the foundation for it, Garten’s coq au vin is distinctly her own.
Based on the recipe she included in her cookbook “Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics,” Garten uses chicken stock as the base of her broth instead of beef stock, while also forgoing the tomato paste. This strengthens the flavor of the chicken itself, but trades off some of the depth that the beef and tomato can provide. The addition of cognac to Garten’s recipe accentuates both the sweet and savory flavors in the dish through its complex layers.
While this likely isn’t the same recipe that inspired Garten at the campsite all those years ago, it’s nice to know where the story of her version of coq au vin came from: a life-changing trip with her husband, the kindness of a stranger, and the wisdom of a food icon. Every recipe, after all, comes from an experience we want to share with the people we cook for, and Garten’s coq au vin is a tale we’d listen to over and over again.