Chicken stew

[ksmith]

Chopped up an onion and five cloves of garlic. Browned them in EVOO and into the crock pot. Added chopped celery and carrots, a cup or so of homemade chicken stock, giblets, chopped parsley, fresh thyme.

Cut up some boneless skinless thighs and breasts into serving-size pieces. Dredged them in seasoned flour--salt, pepper, Old Bay seasoning--and browned them in EVOO. Added them to the pot. Deglazed the pan with about a half-cup or so of white wine. Cooked that down, and added it to the crockpot. Cooked on High 2--this pot has 5 settings, High 1 and 2, Low 1 and 2, and Warm--for about three hours. Served it with broccoli (cooked by setting it atop the chicken) and mashed sweet potatoes.





The thing I can't get over with crockpot cooking is the quality and flavor of the resulting gravy. The browning of the chicken and onion gave it the lovely brown color, as brown as pork gravy. The flavor of the meat itself was a little lacking. Next time, I will use a whole chicken, or chicken with skin and bone. It makes clean-up more of a pain, but the meat tastes better.

Comments

[e-moon60.livejournal.com]

I still use the cold-soak method, but have seen on cooking shows a boil-then-simmer method for dry beans. My favorite for dried beans is the multi-bean soup--I keep a huge old pickle jar full of a mix of beans (red, white, brown, pinto, black, etc. If we've grown red runner beans, their purple & white is beautiful) and use those. Four cups of dried beans, soaked (or...) a ham hock, salt pork, or other source of salt and fat and smoky flavor, and let simmer until beans are tender. The black ones take the longest but they're so *good*. Last Thanksgiving, I had a spiral ham as well as a turkey, and made soup with the ham=bone.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Can the soup be frozen?

I have beans, and bacon, and celery and carrots etc and I really love bean and bacon soup.

[e-moon60.livejournal.com]

I freeze mine...it does change the texture a little, but not enough to bother us. I've never put carrots or celery in my bean soup, though I use them in the other soups. I put in onions and garlic.

Thanks to my friend Karen, who was here for part of the weekend and cooked a sumptuous Friday night dinner, I now know a) what shallots are and b) how to make a beurre blanc sauce with them. O.M.G. We discovered after she left that if you refrigerate such a sauce, and spread it on a flour tortilla with something else in it (or even without) it's really...really...good.