Friday, October 24, 2014

Slow Cooker Chicken and Dumplings


A Hearty Return to the World of Blogging

So I have been sitting on this one. I could not really give the context until now: the wifey is prego! <cue ominous music> 


I mean as in knocked up, not the spaghetti sauce. I mean a person cannot BE Prego. After Citizens United a corporation can be a person but I do not think it works the other way around. Besides Wikipedia tells me Prego is a "trade mark brand name pasta sauce" of Campbell Soup Company (NYSE: CPB). Certainly a person cannot be a brand name of a corporation... I think. Long story short my wife and unborn child are not affiliated with the Campbell Soup Company and we wish them the success in the future as long as their interests don't conflict with our interests. Thank you.


Anyway, we have been winging meals a lot more lately instead of planning them hence my absence. The other day though she was trying to find food that sounded good and she forwarded me this recipe. Mind you she does not love stews typically. Sure you could call this more of a pot pie than a stew, but I did not ask questions. I just make it before she changed her mind.

Resources:
2 tablespoons butter
1 (10.75 ounce) cans condensed cream of chicken soup
1 onion, finely diced
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon parsley
1 teaspoon poultry seasoning
1 teaspoon seasoned salt
1 teaspoon pepper
8 ounces frozen vegetable medley
2 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves (~1.5-2 lbs)
5-10 ounces reduced sodium chicken broth / stock (depends on the size of your slow cooker and the density of the other ingredients)
1 (14.5 ounce) packages refrigerated biscuit dough, torn into small pieces

Method:
Place the place butter, cream of chicken soup, onion, spices, and vegetables in a slow cooker. Mix well, top with chicken and fill with enough broth / stock to cover the chicken.

Cover, and cook for 4 to 5 hours on High. Remove and shred the chicken, return to cooker, and mix. Place the torn biscuit dough on top of the other ingredients in the the slow cooker. Cook until the dough is no longer raw in the center (about another 1 hour for a total of 5 to 6).

Commentary:
"This is my pot pie recipe. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My pot pie recipe is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life." Sorry. Tangent.

Anyway here is a pictorial guide to the oh so complicated steps of "throw it a pot and cook".

Pre-mixing

Post-mixing plus chicken.
Broth added.
Post cooking / shredding.
Plus raw dough: not to be eaten.
Cooked dough: ok to proceed with eating.
The center dough was eaten for testing purposes.
Be jealous of my super cool old school Crock-Pot! So retro! I am pretending like I spent lots of money on this at an antique store instead of it being a hand me down from my mom.

This is originally an allrecipes.com recipe. I have mixed feelings about that website. They have some good stuff, but it tends to come up in Google searches all the time... even when not really relevant. On top of that the recipes tend to be super basic and dull. This one was. Luckily the comments had some good suggestions. Long story short: is the spices and frozen vegetables were a total shot in the dark. It worked for me. If you are sensative to salty or spicy, you can tone down on corresponding spices. It you want more or less vegetables, etc, etc.

The original recipe says 30 minutes for the dough. That did not seem like enough, but it was hard to tell. You bake a biscuit in the oven and you take them out when they get golden. The slow cooker does not produce that color, so I went with the toothpick method (put a toothpick in the middle of the dough, if it comes out clean it is done) plus a few minutes. I was not really worried about over cooking so, 60 minutes seemed safe.

Conclusion:
This is a big delicious meal. It is warm and doughy and felt like a hug in my stomach.

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