20 garlic cloves and 5 ingredients yields 1 slow cooker supper

 

The recipe suggests Italian bread to sop up the sauce; we opted for rice since we had it on hand.

Sometimes I forget how wonderful it is at the end of a weekend to have supper already simmering away and ready by Sunday evening. But then I remember my crock pot again.

Beef shanks with red wine and tomatoes

From "The Italian Slow Cooker," by Michele Scicolone. I've dipped into her French slow cooker book for years, but just ran across the Italian version. Same premise, that slowly simmered classics are well suited for taking advantage of what crock pots are truly good for.

Ingredients

20 garlic cloves, peeled
2 cups dry red wine
1 14-ounce can Italian tomatoes
1 4-inch rosemary sprig
3 pounds bone-in beef shanks

Method

Put garlic cloves in the bottom of a slow cooker. Add wine, tomatoes and rosemary. Salt and pepper the beef shanks and add to pot. Cover and cook on low for 6 to 8 hours until the meat is falling off the bones tender. 

Rating: A fuss-free way to get a hearty Sunday supper ready. The garlic is beyond spreadable at the point the meat is done, so you get a very nice sauce, and strangely not one that's overwhelmingly garlic flavored. It's not like roasted garlic, which is kind of sticky pasty, but instead almost silky. I don't know that I would call it company food, and I wouldn't call it cheap, since even shanks aren't free, but we ate it happily. 

Crockpot chicken two ways: Marbella and cumin carrot stew

Kowalski's had a great (and rare) sale on chicken thighs recently so I stocked up. Great candidates for firing up the slow cooker for some warm late-winter meals.

Spiced chicken stew with carrots

Adapted from “One Pot” from the kitchens of Martha Stewart Living. If you’re wondering why it counts as a one-pot meal when it dirties two, it’s because they were figuring on using a slow cooker that has a browning function, which I lack. I used a mix of regular orange carrots, some purple and yellow baby carrots and a parsnip, since I turned out to have fewer carrots than I thought I did. It made for nice color variation.

Ingredients

2 pounds carrots cut 1½-inch long
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 cinnamon stick
¾ teaspoon ground cumin
2 tablespoons olive oil
8 bone-in chicken thighs (about 2½ pounds)
½ cup golden raisins
½ cup fresh cilantro leaves
¼ cup sliced almonds, toasted

Method

Place carrots, garlic, cinnamon and cumin in a crock pot.

Heat oil in large saute pan. Season chicken with salt and pepper and brown chicken in oil. Place atop carrot mixture in slow cooker.

Cover and cook on low for 8 hours (or 4 on high). Add raisins for the last 15 minutes of cooking. Serve garnished with cilantro and almonds. They suggest serving it with cooked couscous.

Rating: Not sure I'd classify this as a stew, exactly. The cumin flavor helps infuse all those carrots. Maybe a useful dish if you're looking for a weeknight family meal and need to use up some carrots. Not company-rated, by any means.

Ack! I forgot the parsley garnish. It's prettier with that. And if I'd bothered to light it properly.

Slow cooker chicken Marbella

Adapted from something I saved from somewhere online dubbed Party-Picnic Chicken, but when I try to follow the link now I get a dead end so I’m not sure where to credit it. The internet is filled with slow cooker versions of the the classic from "Silver Palate Cookbook" by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins. This one subs apricots for the prunes, which might be blasphemy, but it's a damn tasty bit of heresy. Plus, I had apricots on hand, and I'm unlikely to deliberately procure prunes on a regular basis because there are tastier dried fruits with a consistency I find preferable..

Ingredients

8 bone-in chicken thighs
¼ cup orange juice
¼ cup olive oil
¼ cup red wine vinegar
4 large garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1⅓ cup sliced Spanish green olives
2 tablespoons capers
⅓ cup brown sugar
⅓ cup dried apricots, sliced
2 bay leaves
Chopped parsley for garnish

Method

Place chicken in slow cooker. Sprinkle with garlic, oregano, olives and capers. Combine orange juice, olive oil and vinegar. Pour over the top. Sprinkle brown sugar and apricots over chicken. Tuck in bay leaves and season with salt and pepper.

Cover and cook on low for 6 to 8 hours. Serve chicken pieces with juices drizzled on top and sprinkled with that parsley garnish that I forgot at picture time. Couscous makes a good accompaniment to soak up the sauciness. Serves 4.

Rating: Now this is a slow cooker chicken recipe you could conceivably give to guests. Nice balance of sweet and savory. Dave called it nom-tastic. Certainly a worthy repeater that takes very little prep time. Good ROI of kitchen time. I wouldn't class the first recipe as a keeper, but this one definitely qualifies.

So why did I put the best recipe last? Pure vanity. Sometimes I just want to go ahead and eat so I can't be bothered to take the time to light the food properly, and in Minnesota, natural light does not come at dinner time most of the year. Clearly I'm cooking for us first.

Slow cooker chicken with spinach and sun-dried tomatoes

 

You'll need something to sop up the sauce with this one. I opted for brown rice, but mashed potatoes or pasta would work as well.

Tuscan garlic chicken thighs with spinach and sun-dried tomatoes
Adapted from Eatwell101.com. The recipe did not specify the type of sun-dried tomatoes. You would think it would be dried and rehydrated given the source, but the recipe showed an ingredient link to oil-packed so I used that.

Ingredients
1 tablespoon olive oil
6 to 8 chicken thighs, bone-in
½ tablespoon dried oregano
½ tablespoon dried basil
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
½ cup sun-dried tomatoes
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup heavy cream
⅓ cup chicken broth
¾ cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 cups spinach, leaves torn if large

Method
In a large deep skillet, heat olive oil over medium heat. Brown chicken on one side. Transfer to a slow cooker. Season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle in oregano, basil, red pepper flakes and top with sun-dried tomatoes.

In the same skillet, add garlic and cook until fragrant. Add cream and broth. Simmer over low heat for about 10 minutes until it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon. Stir in Parmesan cheese. Pour sauce over chicken in crockpot.

Cook for 3 to 4 hours on high or 6 to 8 hours on the low setting. Remove chicken thighs and set aside. Stir in spinach and cook about five minutes until it wilts. Serve sauce over chicken. (You may be tempted to just mush in the spinach on top of the chicken in the pot. Resist this temptation, since otherwise you’ll cause the chicken thighs to break down completely in no longer recognizable serving units.)

Rating: Great slow cooker recipe. Really nice flavor, chicken is falling-apart tender, nice colors with the red and green. Fantastic for a weeknight supper, and perfectly passable even for guests. Only downside: since we’re home while it cooks, it smells heavenly for hours before and just like these pan rolls that now I clearly need to make again.

Chicken gnocchi mushroom soup

 

This is an interesting take on chicken noodle soup that comes together in a slow cooker. It makes use of a Parmesan rind, which is a super cheating way to make every soup better. I keep the odds and ends of hard cheeses in a zip-lock bag in the freezer for just such a purpose. Save enough of them and you can make the ambrosia known as cheese broth.

Creamy chicken gnocchi soup

From "Half Baked Harvest Super Simple" by Tieghan Gerard

Ingredients
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 small onion, diced
6 carrots, chopped
5 cups chicken broth
1 cup dry white wine
2 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves, divided, plus more for garnish
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon paprika
½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 Parmesan rind
1 16-ounce container mini potato gnocchi
½ cup grated Parmesan, plus more for garnish
¾ cup whole milk or heavy cream
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 pounds mushrooms, sliced
4 garlic cloves, smashed
4 tablespoons butter
Zest from 1 lemon

Method
Place chicken breasts in a slow cooker pot. Top with onion, carrots, broth, wine, 1 tablespoon thyme, bay leaves, paprika, red pepper flakes, Parmesan rind and season with salt and pepper. Cook on low until chicken is falling apart, 5 to 6 hours.

During the last half hour of cooking, stir in gnocchi, ½ cup Parmesan and milk or cream.

Remove the chicken and shred it. Return to pot.

Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a large skillet. Add mushrooms and season with salt and pepper. Cut until golden, then stir and cook over high heat until caramelized. Reduce heat to medium and add garlic, butter, 1 tablespoon thyme and the lemon zest. Cook until garlic is fragrant. Mash garlic and stir mushroom garlic mixture into soup.

Remove bay leaves. Fight over who gets the Parmesan rind. Serve soup in bowls, garnished with more Parmesan and thyme. Serves 6 heartily.

Rating: Nice flavor. Creamy but not "creamed" soup. The chicken holds up without drying out too much, which can be a tricky thing with chicken breasts in a crock pot. Fairly fast to throw together. It even reheats surprisingly well. It reminds me more of the chicken soup with rice recipe I grew up with. Do people still read that book?

 

Slow cooker Moroccan chicken

 

So many slow cooker recipes don't apply to my life. I'm not just talking about the kind that use canned soup as binders. I'm talking about the cooking time so many of them use. Clearly these recipes were not developed for those of us who work away from home all day and have to commute to get there.

But now that I'm temporarily commuting 14 steps to my home office, I thought it would open up some opportunities to try new recipes. Many are still not perfect for those trying to work set schedules from home, but with some advance prep work, I managed to pull this off on a weekday.

Moroccan chicken with apricots and almonds

From “The French Slow Cooker” by Michele Scicolone

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 large onions, chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

2 tablespoons flour

2 teaspoons paprika

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground cumin

2 cups chicken broth

2 tablespoons lemon juice

2 tablespoons honey

1 cup dried apricot halves, quartered

8 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves

2 tablespoons sliced almonds, toasted

Chopped fresh cilantro for garnish

Method

Heat oil in large skillet over medium heat. Add onions and garlic and cook until onions are golden, stirring often. Mix in spices and flour and cook for 1 minute. Add broth, lemon juice and honey. Bring to a simmer and cook until slightly thickened. Stir in apricots. (Make ahead tip: At this point you can cool the sauce mixture and refrigerate it until ready to proceed. Warm briefly before proceeding.)

Pour half the sauce into a large slow cooker. Sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper and place in the cooker, overlapping slightly as needed. Pour remaining sauce over the top. Cover and cook on low for 2½ to 3 hours.

Taste sauce and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper as needed. Serve sprinkled with almonds and cilantro. 

Rating: A quite decent sauce. I think I let the chicken breasts go a tad too long since I tried to sneak out for a walk in between work and supper. I'd err toward the shorter cooking time depending on the thickness of your chicken breasts, since skinless chicken tends to dry out in the slow cooker even when bathed in sauce. Next time I might up the cumin component just  a bit and see how that goes. It serves 8, and it held up to reheating.

But really, my main take away is that I could make that sauce in advance, heat it up and quickly roast or pan-fry some chicken breasts and get better results with not much more investment of prep time. Which defeats the purpose of the slow cooker meal, I realize. I'd be ready to give up on chicken in the slow cooker, but then I remember a few gems like chicken bacon ragu and chicken with 40 cloves of garlic. Or one of my favorites, Corsican chicken with sun-dried tomatoes. All of these feature bone-in chicken, which takes to a slow cooker treatment much more readily.

Kale and sausage soup

 

I tried this recipe when I took a week off to bake cookies and such, knowing that by supper time I'd have blown away the kitchen and just want food ready and waiting, as this slow cooker book says.

Portuguese Kale and Sausage Soup

Adapted from “Ready and Waiting” by Rick Rodgers

Ingredients

8 ounces sausages, such as chorizo, linguiҫa if you can find it, or kielbasa

¼ cup olive oil, divided

1 large onion, chopped

4 garlic cloves, minced

3 cups water

2 ⅔ cup chicken broth

3 medium potatoes, unpeeled, chopped into ½-inch pieces

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

4 cups chopped sturdy greens, such as kale, beet greens, etc.

Method

Remove any casings from sausages and fry up in a large, deep skillet, breaking up with a spatula. When brown, remove from heat and store in refrigerator until ready to use later in the recipe.

Add 2 tablespoons olive oil to any drippings left in the pan. Cook onions and garlic over medium heat until softened. Transfer to a large slow cooker. Add water, broth, potatoes, salt and red pepper flakes. Cover and cook on low for 6 to 7 hours until potatoes are tender. Mash up a few of the potatoes against the side of the slow cooker to thicken soup slightly. Add sausages and greens and cook for another 30 minutes to an hour until greens are tender. Serve drizzled with the remaining olive oil.

Rating: Fine enough, although it was better reheated once the flavors had more time to meld. Respectable warm food, but not as good as my usual recipe for kale sausage soup. 

But it was really nice to have soup simmering on the crockpot after my upteenth batch of peanut butter M&M cookies. Christmas comes but once a year, but it seems to last pretty much forever. A decent soup helps with the slog through, and the leftovers helped when I was on week 3 and counting. Enough already.

We did take a break from the madness to rewatch "Love Actually" at the Parkway. If we hadn't bought tickets in advance there's no way I would have made myself go out on a cold rainy night when I was frantically behind. But by the time I had a nice malbec in front of me at Pizza Biga for a pre-movie supper, I decided it was just fine.

Slow cooker chicken bacon ragu

 

It was 9 degrees this morning, a tad nippy for early November. Time for comfort food simmering on the stove or in the crockpot. This recipe definitely qualifies.

Slow cooker chicken bacon ragu

From Kitchn.com

Ingredients

6 ounces thick-cut bacon, chopped small

1 small fennel bulb, chopped small (reserve fronds for optional garnish)

1 cup diced onion

8 garlic cloves, minced

½ teaspoon coarse salt

¼ teaspoon pepper

3 tablespoons flour

½ cup white wine

2 pounds boneless skinless chicken thighs (or you can use bone-in, which is what I had on hand, but be prepared to fish out the bones before serving)

1¼ cup chicken broth

2 tablespoons tomato paste

Method

Brown bacon in a large skillet. Leave in the pan and add olive oil if needed to make 2 tablespoons worth of total fat before adding fennel, onion, garlic, salt and pepper. Cook for 2 minutes. Sprinkle with flour and cook for a minute or so. Add wine to deglaze the pan. Cook for a minute and transfer mixture to a slow cooker.

In the same pan, add a drizzle of a bit more olive oil, then brown chicken pieces lightly. Transfer to a slow cooker. In the same pan, heat broth and tomato paste and then pour over chicken and vegetables.

Cook for 4½ to 5½ hours on low, until tender enough to shred. Shred chicken in the slow cooker, removing bones as you go if you use bone-in. Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve over something starchy that will soak up the sauce like potatoes, noodles or rice.

Rating: The bacon really comes through and makes this quite tasty. The fennel pretty much disappears, but that didn’t hurt my feelings since I worried it might overwhelm things. A dish definitely worth putting in the rotation. A minimal amount of front-end prep results in a really nice winter comfort food meal. Actually, make that meals, since this hearty dish easily serves 8. We had it over potatoes the first time, but preferred the leftovers over wide noodles since that was less overly filling. The ragu can freeze and reheat well, so it’s a good make-ahead dish.