Slow Cooker Whole Chicken and Broth

My very least favorite part of cooking is dealing with meat. I'm not sure it will ever be easy for me to pull the gizzards out of a chicken, or if I will ever be able to pat out hamburgers or not cringe when breading fish. I still use wooden spoons and gloves to get a meat loaf put together. Go ahead and laugh, my husband laughs at me for that too. You would think that after 9 years of marriage and experimenting in the kitchen I'd already be over my meat issues, granted I am better, well a little better than I was 9 years ago. I used to bypass the meat section at all costs, and just go for frozen chicken breasts and send my husband to Sharps (local grocery store) just to get ground beef. Now, I do pass through the meat section, grab what I need and get out..that's an improvement, right. Alright I'm sure you will read more about my issues with meat in later posts now back to that chicken. Note that every time I do a chicken in the slow cooker its different than the time before so feel free to tweak it to what you have on hand.

Slow Cooker Whole Chicken

• 1 whole Chicken, thawed (be sure to pull out the bag of 'goodies' from the neck, it will ruin the whole chicken if its left in, yeah I learned that the hard way)
• Raw Carrots (whatever you have on hand, I ususally add about 10 baby carrots)
• Poultry Seasoning or Season Salt or Grill Seasoning
• Minced Garlic (optional, or about 2 tbsp)
• Salt and Pepper
• Water
• And if your adventurous you can add butter under the skin (I've only managed to do that once, and it wasn't a pleasant experience, wooden spoons and gloves did not make it any easier)

Place chicken in slow cooker, toss in carrots, garlic, sprinkle with seasoning, salt and pepper. Add enough water to cover half the chicken, turn on low and cook all day. Shred the meat for a couple meals that week. Save the bones for free broth!

Broth

Place the bones back into the slow cooker with the carrots and other juices from the chicken, add 6 to 8 more cups of water. Turn the slow cooker on low and cook all night, in the morning let it cool a little and strain out the chunks and bones. Pour it into jars or plastic containers, put lids on and let cool on the counter for a little bit, place in the fridge. If you have a grease separater use it, if not just scrape off the gelled fat from the tops after its cooled in the fridge. I fill my containers with 1 or 2 cups to make it easier to use in recipes. Then freeze them until your ready to use them.

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Making FREE Broth is so rewarding! Try it and you will see what I mean!

Alfredo Sauce

My favorite homemade sauce to make has to be Alfredo sauce. I had found a quick recipe for homemade Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo with Veggies in with the Sunday coupons back from 2011. It wasn't homemade enough for me so I had to tweak it and 'google' a recipe for Alfredo sauce. Most of the recipes I found had cream but I didn't have cream, I hardly ever have cream on hand. I hit it lucky when I found a recipe that used cream cheese instead. So easy and I always have stuff on hand to make a quadruple batch, one batch isn't quite enough for a full pot of fettuccine, but one and a third is perfect. So my quadruple batch is really enough for 3 meals. It's so easy to make a huge batch and freeze the rest for later, might as well since your making a mess anyways.


Alfredo Sauce (quadruple batch)

• 4 tbsp Butter
• 8 tbsp minced Garlic
• 4 tbsp Flour
• 4 cups Milk (or if you don't want to use up 4 whole cups of milk, use part chicken broth)
• 1 cup Cream Cheese (1 full block)
• 1 cup Parmesan Cheese
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Saute butter and garlic for 30 seconds. Whisk in flour until it bubbles and soaks up butter. Whisk in milk (and broth).  I like to use half chicken broth and half milk. Cook continually until slightly thick, about 2 minutes. Stir in cream cheese and Parmesan until smooth, about 2 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste. Divide into thirds, use one for dinner tonight and freeze the other.

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If you want to try the recipe out for just one dinner, here are the amounts for a single batch.

Alfredo Sauce

• 1 tbsp Butter
• 2 tbsp minced Garlic
• 1 tbsp Flour
• 1 cup Milk (or half milk and half broth)
• 1/4 cup Cream Cheese
• 1/2 cup Parmesan Cheese
• Salt and Pepper

 Saute butter and garlic for 30 seconds. Whisk in flour until it bubbles and soaks up butter. Whisk in milk (and broth).  I like to use half chicken broth and half milk. Cook continually until slightly thick, about 2 minutes. Stir in cream cheese and Parmesan until smooth, about 2 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste. Divide into thirds, use one for dinner tonight and freeze the other.

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Now on to my tweak of the found recipe for Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo with Veggies.

Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo with Veggies

• 1 box Fettuccine
• 1 bag frozen Veggies- about 3 cups (I use a combination of broccoli florets and carrots with about a cup of mixed vegetables of corn, carrots, peas and green beans)
• 1 batch Alfredo Sauce (which is 1 1/3 of the quadruple batch
• 1 1/2 cups cooked chicken

Start by boiling water in a big pot for pasta and cook as directed by the package.While pasta is cooking, in a  separate pan heat up Alfredo sauce and chicken.  Midway through cooking the pasta (stop your timer) toss in the frozen vegges into the boiling pasta water, bring back up to boil and restart your pasta timer. Check pasta and vegetables for tenderness. Drain pasta and veggies, reserving 1 cup pasta water. Add Alfredo chicken mixture to the pasta and 1 cup reserved pasta water and toss until coated.

Bowtie Pasta with Roasted Red Peppers

I couldn't help but to post another recipe...or two....and a tip.  Today I was home with 2 sick kids so I spent some time in the kitchen cleaning and getting a menu plan  ready for the week. I also cooked a partial bag of frozen chicken tenderloins to use for dinners this week. I have found it so  much easier to cook a whole bag of chicken at once to make dinner prep that much faster, especially on days that I work and my husband is in charge of getting dinner on the table. I try to plan easy dinners for him to get ready, and do more prep ahead of time. Half of the chicken I baked got sliced for this bowtie pasta, and the other half of the chicken got chopped into small pieces to go into chicken cheese crescents (recipe below) for Thursday dinner that I will put together Wednesday morning while my daughter is at preschool, so when my husband does dinner he can just pop them in the oven and heat up a veggie for dinner.


Broiled Chicken

Turn on the broiler. Dump a whole bag of frozen chicken tenderloins on a big sheet pan, sprinkle with salt and pepper or grill seasoning. Bake at 350 for 7 minutes, flip and bake another 7 minutes until done. Let cool a little bit then chop or slice as needed and divide in meal portions and toss in the fridge.

This will be our dinner tomorrow night. It was originally found here. So here goes my tweak...


Bowtie Pasta with Roasted Red Peppers and Grilled Chicken

• 1 lb. bowtie pasta
• 1-1 1/2 lbs. grilled chicken, sliced
• handful of diced onion (since my family isn't fans of onions, I chop and freeze them and use them sparingly)
• 3 tsp minced garlic (I sometimes have garlic on hand or a store bought jar)
• 4 Tbs. butter
• 1 cup milk (I rarely have half and half on hand, some times I add 2 oz of cream cheese along with the mlik to make it creamier)
• 1 cup chicken broth
• 1 tsp. grill seasoning (tastefully simple is my favorite)
• 12 oz jar roasted red peppers, sliced
• 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

Cook the pasta according to the package directions. While it cooks, melt butter in a skillet over medium heat and cook the onion and garlic till soft. Whisk in milk and chicken broth. Stir in grill seasoning and mozzarella. Lower the heat to keep the sauce from boiling.

Add the chicken and red pepper slices to the sauce. Stir frequently and keep and eye on the heat so it doesn't boil. Drain the cooked pasta and stir it together with the sauce.

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Here goes my mother-in-laws recipe originally made with tuna, then she tweaked it by using a can of chicken. It quickly became my favorite meal to request for my birthday dinner every year, for about 13 years in a row.

Chicken Cheese Crescents

• 2 cups Chicken, cooked and chopped 
• 1 can Cream of Chicken Soup (Homemade version found here, of course I tweak that too) 
• 1 can crescent rolls 
• 1 1/2 inches of velveeta cheese 
• 1/2 soup can of milk 

Mix chicken with 5 tbsp cream of chicken soup and about 1/2 inch chunk of velveeta cut into small cubes. In a microwave safe dish (I use an 8x8 square baking dish) add remainder of chicken soup, 1/2 can of milk, and 1 inch velveeta cubed. Microwave on high 3 minutes until melted. Unroll crescent rolls into individual triangles, divide chicken mixture into each one and roll up starting at big side and roll to small point. Place rolls into cheesy 8x8. Bake 375 for about 30-40 minutes until brown and bubbly.

Chicken Cheese Crescents can be made a few days in advance and put in the fridge, or even frozen up to a week. They can be made using grilled chicken, canned chicken or rotisserie chicken. It can easily be doubled in a 9x13.

There ya have it, 2 more recipes and some tips.