I knew today would be a bit hectic, plus I’m pretty lazy, so I wanted to find something that wasn’t labour intensive or that took up a lot of my time.
Enter my favourite kitchen item: The Slow Cooker. To be able to put all your ingredients in one pot and let it cook for hours without having to do anything? Amazing. It’s the next best thing to a personal chef – and I know I won’t be having one of those in my kitchen any time soon.
There are a TON of recipes for Slow Cooker (Crock Pot) meal ideas on Pinterest. I found a recipe for Balsamic Chicken that contained (mostly) ingredients I already had on hand. (I try to avoid a trip to the grocery store with a tyrannical toddler when I can)
It took very little prep and it sounded pretty good.
Balsamic Chicken Ingredients:
1 tsp. garlic powder (I like to be generous with anything garlicky)
1 tsp. dried basil
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
2 tsp. dried minced onion (I didn’t have this so I just left it out)
4 garlic cloves, minced (I don’t usually keep fresh cloves on hand. I hate taking time to prep them, so I get jars of already minced garlic. This one was almost empty, so I just dumped in the rest of it)
1 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
8 boneless, skinless chicken thighs or breasts (I only had two breasts, I still used the same amount of ingredients)
Fresh parsley (I don’t keep any of this stuff on hand either, so I just went without)
Instructions:
1. Combine the garlic powder, basil, salt, pepper, onion in a small bowl and season chicken on both sides with the mixture (I just shook the spices right onto the chicken out of the jar, I didn’t exactly measure any of them, just kind of eyed it out.)
2. Pour olive oil on the bottom of the crock pot and add garlic (The oil I definitely measured because I didn’t want my chicken swimming in it. However the garlic I most definitely did not. The more garlic the better in my opinion!)
3. Place the chicken on top of the oil and garlic
4. Pour the balsamic vinegar over the chicken (Don’t do this step really fast while wearing a white shirt. The splash back shot up farther than I anticipated.)
5. Cover and cook on high for 4 hours (I flipped the chicken over after about 3 hours because the tops weren’t covered in the vinegar and I wanted to make sure it all got a chance to cook thoroughly.)
6. Sprinkle with fresh parsley and serve (Obviously I didn’t complete this step. It’s really only for a visual anyways and I’m not trying to impress anyone.)
I ended up just cooking for myself tonight, so I didn’t bother making up a side dish. Too much extra effort and I’d end up tossing half of it anyways. (we always pack up leftovers with such good intentions, but they just end up sitting in the back of the fridge till I honestly can’t tell what they are anymore)
So, here’s my amazing dinner:
Good thing I was only cooking for myself. I can’t say I particularly enjoyed the fruits of my labour. It was pretty dry, even after cooking in liquid for the past almost 5 hours.
I probably screwed something up because I didn’t adjust the ingredient amounts to match up with the fact that I only had 1/3 of the amount of chicken that the recipe called for, but I still don’t think I’ll be adding this to our dinner rotation.
It might be better sliced in a salad or with an actual side dish and not as just a chunk of chicken washed down by some cheap wine, but I could only eat a couple bites of it.
Just sent hubby a text to pick me up some McDonalds on his way home.
Ditzy Domestic Diva 