Pressure-Cooker Chicken Thighs in Wine Sauce

April. The garden goes in, pandemic or no pandemic. Jack has been waiting for this — the soil temperature hit fifty degrees on Wednesday and he announced it at breakfast like a battle commander declaring an offensive. "We plant Saturday," he said. He was not asking. He was informing. The eight-year-old was informing his family that the agricultural window had opened and participation was mandatory.

We planted for two days. Tomatoes — all twelve starts, including the Mortgage Lifter, which had grown into a plant that looked like it could lift an actual mortgage, thick-stemmed and determined. Peppers. Green beans. Corn — ten rows this year, because Jack argued that the pandemic proved the need for more homegrown food and his argument was persuasive and also he had already bought the seeds. Watermelon on the mound, of course. Zucchini (two plants, because even in a pandemic, two zucchini plants produce enough zucchini to overwhelm a neighborhood). Cucumbers on a new trellis Kevin built from leftover lumber, held together with screws and hope.

Noah helped. He doesn't usually — the garden is Jack's domain — but something about the pandemic pushed Noah into the dirt, literally, kneeling beside his brother and digging holes for tomato starts with the quiet competence of a boy who watches his brother work and has absorbed more than anyone realized. Noah planted a Sun Gold tomato and tamped the soil around it and said, "Now what?" Jack said, "Now you water it and wait." Noah said, "How long?" Jack said, "Sixty-five days." Noah nodded. The precision. The patience. Two brothers in the dirt, one who's been there all along and one who arrived because the world got small enough that the backyard became the whole world, and in that small world, the garden was the center.

I called Mom. She sounded tired. She said Dad had a cough — "Just a cough, Diane, not that kind of cough" — and I stood in my kitchen and gripped the phone and felt the same fear that every daughter of aging parents felt in April 2020, the fear that is shapeless and enormous and has no cure except time and distance and the desperate hope that the virus is somewhere else. The cough was a cold. Just a cold. But the three days between the cough and the confirmation felt like three years, and I cooked every one of them — pot roast, chicken soup, bread — cooking as prayer, cooking as bargaining, cooking as the only thing my hands knew how to do while my heart waited for news from Grinnell.

Those three days waiting to hear about Dad’s cough, I needed my hands busy and something warm on the stove — and this pressure-cooker chicken in wine sauce became the meal I made on loop, the one that smelled like something was going to be okay even when I wasn’t sure it was. It has that same deep, braised quality as a pot roast but comes together fast, which matters when you’re standing in a kitchen that is doing double duty as a prayer room. I made it for my family, and I made it for myself, and I’ve made it every April since.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 25 min | Total Time: 40 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

4 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs (about 2 lbs total)
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, thinly sliced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup low-sodium chicken broth
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped

Instructions

Season the chicken. Pat the chicken thighs dry with paper towels. Combine salt, pepper, garlic powder, and thyme in a small bowl and rub the mixture evenly over both sides of each thigh.
Sear. Set your pressure cooker to the Sauté function and heat the olive oil until shimmering. Add chicken thighs skin-side down and sear without moving them for 4–5 minutes until golden brown. Flip and sear the other side for 2 minutes. Transfer to a plate.
Build the sauce. Add the sliced onion to the pot and cook, stirring, for 3 minutes until softened. Add the garlic and cook 30 seconds more. Stir in the tomato paste and cook 1 minute. Pour in the white wine and scrape up any browned bits from the bottom of the pot. Add the chicken broth and Worcestershire sauce and stir to combine.
Pressure cook. Return the chicken thighs to the pot, skin-side up, nestling them into the sauce. Secure the lid and set to high pressure for 15 minutes. Allow a natural pressure release for 5 minutes, then carefully quick-release any remaining pressure.
Finish the sauce. Remove the chicken to a serving platter. Set the pot back to Sauté and simmer the sauce for 3–4 minutes until slightly reduced. Swirl in the butter until melted and glossy. Taste and adjust seasoning.
Serve. Spoon the wine sauce generously over the chicken thighs and scatter fresh parsley on top. Serve over mashed potatoes, egg noodles, or crusty bread to catch every bit of sauce.

Nutrition (per serving)

Pressure-Cooker Chicken Thighs in Wine Sauce — The Meal I Made While I Waited