Adventures in Slow Cooking - 1st attempt

Well, I didn't poison anyone. Success! 

I purchased a slow cooker/crock pot on a whim a few months ago and have been slow (get it?) to use it because you have to leave it on for 4-7 hours, and I didn't want to use it while I was sleeping or at work because I was afraid I'd burn my apartment down or start a fire. My friend Mike to the rescue: 

"Do you leave your toaster, microwave and refrigerator plugged in when you leave the house? Crock pots won’t burn your apartment down in and on itself. The key is the liquid in your dish, lots of it. Even if it dries out, the worst that will happen is dried out/scorched food. It will not burst into flames for two reasons --- the ceramic innards of the pot, and the cover that will just snuff out any fire-feeding oxygen. If the crock pot will cause a fire for any reason, it will likely be due to defective pot wiring, or your apartment wiring being defective."

Well, that was concerning, because my apartment IS 184 years old, so it surely has defective wiring. So I decided to use it on a lazy Sunday (read: HOTTTT) when I would be there for all 6 hours of the recipe. Starting with baby steps, I used a simple recipe that had been passed along to me that was so easy even I couldn’t mess it up if I tried. It was called “3 envelope chicken.” You basically mixed together the envelope packets of zesty Italian dressing, ranch dressing and chicken gravy, mixed with water and poured over the chicken. BOOM. Easiest thing eva, right?

5 hours later, I opened the yummy smelling pot and pulled out the chicken. It was so tender that it was literally falling off my fork when I was picking it up. No knife needed. 

 

While I liked it overall, it wasn’t my favorite chicken recipe. I think the next is pulled chicken sandwiches with my Bodacious BBQ sauce. You could slather Bodacious on a notebook and it would taste delicious. New recipe idea perhaps?