something coming soon.
When I can figure out how to get a list of the other posts in this category here, it will be. For now, just some pictures. =)
flickr stream.
Crock Pot Cookin', Take 1
For the chili cook-off, I needed a crockpot. Since we didn’t have one, I bought one, and now I’m finding myself wanting to use it. Whether it’s the challenge of it, the fact that you could run one off of a little solar panel and nothing else, or some deep seeded need to belong to the Great American Crock Pot Tradition, I’m not sure. Today, I tried my first recipe.
I started with 2 whole chicken legs. Bone, skin, thigh, drumstick. I through those in, with 1/4 cup of Cholula hot sauce, 1 Samuel Adams lager, and some salt. It cooked about 7 hours.
First I noticed that the chiles were adding something to the air in the kitchen that was making me sneeze. Then there was a cooking smell to go along with things. Not great. Not like a chicken roasting in the oven, or braising on the stove with some garlic. I definitely need to think about the aromatics of the “during” phase. By dinner time the chicken was falling off the bone, and about the texture of a good homemade chicken soup. As I told my Mom, it’s hard to make something like this without thinking of Thomas Keller, talking about how when you cook a meat into a broth, the meat has given all its flavor to the liquid and should be discarded. I ate it anyway, and the flavor was good, but not quite as good as I was hoping.
What went wrong? I think for starters the time was too long. I think the chicken probably was at its prime around 4 hours. A tougher meat could likely stand longer, but this was not it. I think the flavoring was too simplistic for this type of cooking. A roast chicken needs hardly anything, but this needed something. Perhaps too much of the flavor was left in the pot. Anyway, it was a good learning experience, and you do have to start somewhere.
posted to In the Kitchen, at 08:54 PM. permalink
your thoughts on this post:
I’ve found that browning the chicken first and cooking on low helps a lot. It also helps to have a pretty full pot. My favorite: Put some peeled carrot chunks in crockpot. Brown chicken pieces (at least 6)in some oil, set aside, saute onions in same pan, add curry powder (couple tablespoons at least), then chicken again, till curry smells great, put solids in crockpot and deglaze pan with chicken stock (1 box swanson’s organic), add about 1/2 cup peanut butter and stir, dump into crockpot, cook on low about 6 hours. I take out the chicken and debone it, then put it back before serving, because my kids are icky about bones. Quick Americanized (sorry) African chicken stew.
posted by: anne | March 25, 2006 12:20 PM
forgot to mention above recipe goes great with whole-wheat couscous, I’ll stop bugging you now.
posted by: anne | March 27, 2006 10:07 AM
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