Slow Cooker Chicken
Since school started back, Devin is home for supper again most nights. After he gets done with football practice, he is ready for a big filling supper. I have missed cooking big suppers. They are actually easier for me since that is what I am used to. My husband likes a variety of items at each meal which is hard to do when you are only cooking for 2 or 3. I end up with a lot of leftovers when there are only 2-3 eating.
I bought some chicken legs and thighs on sale a month or so ago but I didn’t separate them out before I froze them. I laid both packages in the fridge to start thawing on Sunday morning. By Tuesday morning they were thawed enough to get them apart but still pretty frozen. I put half in the slow cooker and half in a plastic bag and put them back in the fridge.
I didn’t have much time since I had to get to work and did not have any recipe ready, so I just threw together a quick sauce. I didn’t really measure much besides the broth. I used a cup of chicken broth, a can of cream chicken w/herbs soup, a spoonful of garlic, stone ground mustard, honey and a dash of Worcestershire sauce. Once I stirred it up, I poured it over the top of the chicken, turned the slow cooker on low and left for work.
It cooked for almost 10 hours on low. Any kind of sauce can be used, I thought it would have a little bit of a honey mustard taste but they said it really didn’t. They did enjoy it and said it was very good. We had to be very careful removing the chicken from the slow cooker, it was so tender, it was just falling off the bone.
Wednesday, I put potatoes in the slow cooker and planned to bake the rest of the chicken, so I quickly poured a brine in the bag of chicken and let it set while I was at work. I forgot to put the chicken in the oven when I first got home, so I had to change my plans. I poured some olive oil in a skillet and sauted some garlic, then added the chicken broth, stone ground mustard, honey and whisked them up to create a sauce. I put the chicken pieces in the skillet and cooked on high until it came to a boil, then reduced the heat to medium and cooked covered. I turned them over once and cooked about 30 minutes until they were cooked completely.
While the chicken was cooking, I was trying to figure out what to have with it and decided that some rice would be good with the sauce. I quickly put on a large pot of plain rice. Once the chicken was done, I moved it to a plate and added some flour and milk to create a chicken garlic sauce.
Once the sauce and rice were done we were ready to eat. I poured a spoonful of the sauce over a bed of rice and added a boneless thigh. They really liked the combination of the sauce with the rice. Since the chicken was cooked in the sauce, it didn’t brown, so if that is important to you, you may want to brown the chicken before adding the sauce.
It was a great way to show that the same ingredients could be used to create 2 totally different meals. I didn’t use a specific recipe, just some basic ingredients that I have used in sauces before. I only used about 2 cups of liquid to pour over the chicken which was plenty for the slow cooker. Since I didn’t use a can of soup in the skillet version, there wasn’t a lot of sauce left after cooking the chicken, so adding the flour and milk increased the sauce amount enough to spoon over the rice.
The sauce can be easily adapted to your tastes. I didn’t think about it at the time, but I thought later that I should have cut up an onion and put in the slow cooker for additional flavor. Other veggies or spices could be added as well. If you add a lot of other veggies or have a larger amount of chicken, you may need to increase your amount of sauce. I had 5 chicken legs and 3 boneless thighs for each meal.
Slow Cooker Chicken
Ingredients
7-8 chicken Pieces
1 cup chicken broth
1 can cream of chicken soup w/ herbs
1 tbls minced garlic
1 tbls stone ground mustard
1 tbls honey
Place chicken pieces in slow cooker. Mix all other ingredients together and pour over the chicken. Cook on low about 8 hours.
