Crock pot: "Chicken and dressing" and Yay Beer!

[thistlechaser]

Before I had tried to make the 'chicken and orange soda - five ingredient or less crock pot cooking', I bought a couple five ingredient or less cook books. One of them has not a single recipe with less than eight ingredients. That both amuses me and confuses me. Do they think that people don't count? Or did they just not care?

Some of the recipes sound just totally horrible. The worst was:

Place chicken in crock pot.
Place entire jar of pickles (juice and pickles) in crock pot.
Cook for eight hours.

I can't imagine how that would taste. Or make your house smell. I do like pickles, but... *shudder*

Anyway, chicken and dressing! I've never really understood what "dressing" is (stuffing? gravy? All the "fixings"?), but it seemed like one of the best recipes in the book, so even though I had a few doubts (making stuffing in a crock pot..?) I tried it.

Place 4 boneless chicken breasts in (salt and pepper'ing it as you do).
Place piece of swiss cheese on each breast.
Pour two cans of cream of chicken soup in.
Pour (some amount I don't remember) chicken broth in.
(Note: We're up to five ingredients here, if you count S&P together as one!)
Place a box of stuffing in.
Melt stick of butter, pour over stuffing.
Cook 6-8 hours.

I hate stuffing in the bird (mushy = yucky!), I like it crunchy on top, so I thought this would be doom. Surprisingly, the stuffing was outstanding! Only the edges got soggy, where the soup had bubbled up.

The whole thing was amazingly good, though must have been horrible calorie-wise (hi whole stick of butter and two cans of cream-based soup!). Unfortunately the leftovers didn't taste quite as good the next night.

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Comments

[ani-mama.livejournal.com]

Chicken...and an entire jar of pickles. Xp That just sounds ewww.
I don't much like those five ingredients or less type of cookbooks, because they use a whole lot of processed products to keep the list down. Everything seems to take a can of cream soup, packet of onion soup mix, or both! It might be easy, but probably not all that good for you.

If you are looking for crockpot recipes, this is a fun site. http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/

Fix-it and Forget-it cookbook by Ranck and Good is one I use most often for slow cooker recipes. It has lots of variations of the same basic idea(bean soup or beef stew, for instance) so you can pick whichever one suits your tastes and ingredients on hand.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

*laughs* Doesn't that sound eww? All I can think of is the smell/taste of hot pickle juice. Must be just awful!

And woo, thanks for the link! *goes to look*

[achika-soladia.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that link! I've been trying to find a good recipe to combine my chuck roast and crock pot that didn't want a lot of the things that I don't like (I can't stand cooked vegetables! Raw vegetables, yes, cooked, DO NOT WANT!).

I found me a couple of recipes there that I'm going to try. Originally I was just going to cook for myself, but I think I might invite my family over to try it cause it sounds tasty!

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yay! Let us know what you make and how it comes out!

[kamalloy.livejournal.com]

One of my friends is subscribed to the what_a_crock community and I sometimes read her feed. There's a good amount of interesting-looking recipes posted there (thought I don't have a crock pot) and it might take some searching to find what you want, but it seems pretty well-organized.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yes! I'm friended with that comm, too. I've found a couple things that I wanted to try, but haven't yet.

[voidmagus.livejournal.com]

Stuffing and Dressing are the exact same thing- a mixture of bread, mirepoix, broth, and herbs- with 1 difference- the cooking method. Stuffing is stuffed into the body cavity of the cooked bird. Dressing is cooked separately. And you should hate stuffing! It is nigh impossible to cook stuffing to safe done-ness without overcooking the bird it is stuffed in. The only method I know involves cooking the stuffing in a cloth bag in the microwave, then stuffing it (bag&all) in the bird. So, stick to dressing.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Ah! That makes sense, thanks.

[achika-soladia.livejournal.com]

I've recently started cooking like once a week with my crock pot because I like being able to go away and only have to come back once in awhile to cook. Mostly I've cooked chili, but this is relevant to my interests. If you happen to remember how much chicken broth you used, that'd be awesome. =D

And the dressing just rests on top of the rest of it while it cooks?

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

You know the normal sized box of chicken broth? About half of that.

And yep! In mine, the soup bubbled up around the edges, but otherwise the dressing just sits on top and stays nice and crunchy.

Mmm, now I'm hungry again!