The brilliance of Julia Child was her ability to make French cooking accessible for American home cooks. Child had a tremendous ability to smooth out the stuffier, more rigid French recipes that she worked magic with, creating simpler adaptations that appealed to busy households across the Western world for over sixty years. It’s this supreme skill, and her amazing personal style, that keeps Mastering The Art of French Cooking on top of best-seller lists, and made Child herself a cultural icon in print and on screens.

Coq Au Vin, or “rooster with wine,” is one of Child’s greatest recipe adaptations. It even features in season 1 of the HBO series Julia, a tremendous show that I can’t recommend highly enough. Child is able to take the seemingly difficult and laborious dish, streamlining the process to create a stunningly flavorful recipe that can headline dining tables, family get-togethers, and dinner parties, for its elegance, grace, and taste.

I’ve made one significant adjustment to Child’s original in the recipe below, replacing the bacon drying, trimming, and cooking by incorporating lardons. Lardons are bacon chunks that can be store-bought for precisely the purpose intended by Child in her recipe. Using lardons saves time at the start of your process, and makes cooking Coq Au Vin more efficient.

I’ve also done away with preparing brown chicken stock, a homemade version crafted from searing chicken that is more time-consuming. In this era, I feel you can replace the brown stock with a quality store-bought version that will provide you with ample flavor for the dish.

Coq Au Vin can be made with white wine, however, it lacks some of red wine’s more hearty and robust characteristics. In her book, Child writes that the wine should be “a young, full-bodied red Burgundy, Beaujolais, or Cotes du Rhone.” The best thing about these French reds is that they are both affordable and perfect for enjoying along with the meal.

If you want to create great French meals in a more streamlined process, then following Julia Child’s recipes is an ideal starting point. Coq Au Vin may seem like a difficult task, yet Child’s recipe makes it an enjoyable process with truly delicious results.

Bon Appetit!