Digging For Recipe Gems…FOUND ONE!

Cooking for a family is definitely different than for just a couple. Where my spouse is at least game enough to try anything I choose to make, the kids on the other hand are never all that willing to try new things. I remember what it was like as a child. If we only ate what the kids liked then all of us would subsist on pizza, mac’n'cheese, and hot dogs for most meals. Make this your mantra when trying new things because they will love you more as they get older because you tried to expose them to the myriad of tastes that are possible in a world of eating. On to the crux of this post…

Earlier this week my son was lamenting that the chicken he was eating was a little firm and chewy for his tastes. It was cooked on the George Foreman  so it was pseudo grilled. That was understandable. Since there was a good special on chicken at the local grocery store, I had a fair amount of building material to make some more chicken meals. With my cookin’ mojo surging, I dived into some new recipes.

The Crock-Pot is a much maligned object in our house. Some old standards use it but nothing new. There was the focus of my search. It had to be cooked in the Crock-Pot. Slow cooker recipe books are a lot like most other recipe books. They are cluttered with items in the recipe, though intriguing, often do no appear in our kitchen. Who keeps dry tapioca around anyway?…err…wait, I have that. Anyway…on a whim, after paging through a couple books, I opened an old Crock-Pot owners manual from my last slow cooker(Rest it’s foodie soul, as it took a lethal header from the top cabinet down to the wood floor a few years ago). There in it’s nine poultry recipes was my target, Sweet’n'Spicy Glazed Chicken.

(Below is the recipe word for word from the Rival Crock-Pot Stoneware Slow Cooker manual)

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6 – 4oz skinless, boneless chicken breast halves

1 Tbsp Oil

¼ tsp salt

¼ tsp pepper

4 cloves garlic, minced

½ cup brown sugar

1 cup reduced-sodium soy sauce

1 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth

2 Tbsp lemon juice

½ tsp cayenne pepper

¼ cornstarch

½ cup water

In a large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add chicken and brown on both sides. Season chicken with salt and pepper. Put in Crock-Pot. In a small bowl, combine remaining ingredients, except cornstarch and water. Pour over chicken. Cover; cook on Low 7 to 9 hours(High: 3 to 4 hours).

When done, remove chicken breasts and turn Crock-Pot to High; cover. Combine cornstarch and water. Stir into liquid in Crock-Pot. Place cover slightly ajar on Crock-Pot. Cook until thickened (15 to 30 minutes). 6 servings.

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Now, as anyone who enjoys cooking knows, a recipe is a guideline for culinary endeavors not a cardinal rule. Here is what I changed from it….

1. Cut the soy sauce down to 1/2 cup and substituted water with the other 1/2 cup. That was A LOT of soy sauce for taste. In fact, the recipe reports a sodium count of a staggering 1879mg as it is written. OUCH!

2. With no chicken broth in the house I took a can of chicken noodle soup and used the chicken broth from it with added water to account for 1 cup.

3. Substituted lime juice for lemon juice. Once again, this was out of necessity since I had one and not the other.

4. Rather than pre-cook the chicken I simply put it in the slow cooker raw. In four hours it was going to cook completely and I was aiming for moistness.

5. After cooking I cut the chicken up into small pieces, poured it into the thickened sauce, and served on a bed of white rice.

When I do this one again… and I will because it was yummy… I will consider adding pineapple and water chestnuts because with the soy sauce it has such an Asian feel and really needs something crunchy and tactile in it. Otherwise I would not change anything else. Very good and easy to make. Thank you, Rival Crock-Pot. I knew I kept that care manual for some reason.

Oh, and yes, I still had a little child insurrection but it was worth it.

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