Apart from pot roast, our family has, in the past, not been particularly crazy about crockpot recipes.  We’ve tried some that we just didn’t care for.  (I don’t recall anything being gross; there just wasn’t much we were especially fond of.)  Many crockpot recipes require a lot of attention throughout the day, which defeats my primary goal of slow cooking – to get dinner taken care of when I’m not around for the day.  A lot of them call for highly-processed ingredients, like cream soups.  (And, yes, you can make your own “cream soup,” but then that requires cooking ahead of time, when I just want to be able to throw everything in and go.)

So, while we’ve used the crockpot as a make-ahead tool for things like pulled-meat barbecue, or similar fillings, we’ve not ever had it in our regular dinner rotation.  But I’ve wanted to change that, because on errand day, it would be really nice to not come home and have to scramble for dinner!  So I’ve been gradually trying out some new recipes, making a concerted effort to find a handful we can add into the permanent rotation.

Most recently, we tried Savory Chicken and Herb Wine Chicken.

Our Experience with Savory Chicken

I liked both of these recipes because they’re “dump” recipes.  That means you put all the ingredients together ahead of time and freeze them, then thaw them and “dump” them into the crockpot to cook.  That made them perfect for helping to stock the freezer before Caleb was born.  Both recipes called for wine (white wine in this case, red wine for the other); I don’t use wine often, so I used those little single-serving bottles.  That way I didn’t have a big bottle of wine losing quality.

I actually haven’t cooked this one in the crockpot yet, though!

When I planned to cook it, I forgot to get it out far enough ahead of time to thaw.  So it wasn’t ready to go in by lunchtime.  It was largely ready to be cooked by that evening, though.  So I pressure-cooked it.  The chicken was still a little bit frozen, so I gave it a few minutes more to cook than I would have if it were thoroughly thawed.

I cooked it for 23 minutes at 15psi, then released the pressure to remove the lid, and added the broccoli.  Then I replaced the lid, brought it back up to pressure, and cooked for 2-3 more minutes.  The broccoli was mushy (I’d been too lazy to look up how long broccoli needs in the pressure cooker), but it was otherwise very good.  In fact, it was flavored so well that even the mushy broccoli wasn’t that bad – and we really don’t like mushy broccoli.  I would definitely do this again, but I’d cook the chicken for a minute or so more first, before adding the broccoli, and cook the broccoli for a little less time.

I have no reason to think it won’t be good slow-cooked, too; we just haven’t yet cooked our second batch!

Our Experience with Herb Wine Chicken

The Herb Wine Chicken I did do in the crockpot.  We found the wine flavor a bit overwhelming for our palates.  (There is not a wine lover among us.)  With the next batch I will add a little chicken broth to dilute the wine flavor.  And next time I mix this up, I will probably replace half the wine with broth.

Looking for More Recipes?

If you’re looking for more slow-cooker recipes, check out Crock On!, which is part of this week’s Natural Mothering ebook collection.  None of the recipes in Crock On! use ingredients like cream soups.

It contains soups, sandwich fillings, main dishes, sides, and even desserts.  I learned a couple of great tips for slow cooker usage.  And there are pictures!

(Get it for less than $1 when you purchase the Natural Mothering package.)

This post is being shared at Fat Tuesday, Titus 2 Tuesday, Allergy-Free Wednesday.