Slow Cooker Chicken Stew and Cheddar Biscuits

Slow Cooker Chicken Stew

The photo above doesn’t do justice to how good this chicken stew was.

I like making chicken stew in the slow cooker. The preparation is easy and, like all things made in the slow cooker, you can do other things while your dinner cooks. The only problem I’ve had with making chicken stew in the slow cooker is getting the stew to really thicken up. This takes a little time. The batch in the photo was almost as thick as I wanted it to be, but I was a little impatient and didn’t let it cook long enough to get to my desired level of stewiness. Nevertheless, it was delicious.

You can vary the vegetables in your stew. Cut up large potatoes instead of using the mini-potatoes. Add small whole boiler-type onions instead of cutting up large onions. Whole fresh mushrooms are also an excellent addition to this stew.

I use Old Bay seasoning in my chicken stew. If you don’t have it on hand, you can use poultry seasoning or experiment with your own spice combinations, such as thyme, sage and pepper.

On the day this batch of slow cooker chicken stew was served, my daughter Darcy was visiting and made some baking powder biscuits with cheddar cheese to go along with the stew. That recipe is included here for you, too. 

MA's Slow Cooker Chicken Stew

Chopped and ready for slow cooking

6 boneless skinless chicken breasts (about 3 lbs), cut into 1 ½” chunks

4 medium onions, cut into 8ths

2 tsp garlic, minced

5 ribs celery, thickly sliced

4 carrots, peeled and thickly sliced or diced

1.5 lbs mini-potatoes, peeled or unpeeled, halved if desired

1 cup frozen peas

2 tsp Old Bay seasoning or poultry seasoning

8 cups chicken broth or 3 chicken bouillon cubes with 8 cups boiling water

¼ cup flour

½ cup water or chicken broth

Now cover and cook s-l-o-w-l-y

Place onions, garlic, celery, carrots, potatoes and chicken into slow cooker.

Pour chicken broth over chicken and vegetables. Sprinkle with Old Bay seasoning.

Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours or high for 4-5 hours, or until chicken is cooked through and fork tender.

Add frozen peas and cook for 15 minutes.

In a bowl, whisk together flour and water/broth to make a smooth paste. Stir the paste into the stew. Cover the slow cooker and cook until thickened, about 15 or 20 minutes.

Serve with biscuits or bread.

Makes 8 servings.

Printable Recipe for MA's Slow Cooker Chicken Stew

MA’s Cheddar Biscuits

Chicken Stew with Cheddar Biscuit

Preheat oven to 450º F.

Lightly grease a cookie sheet.

2 cups flour

4 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

4 tbsp butter or margarine, chilled

2/3 to ¾ cup milk

½ cup grated cheddar cheese

In a mixing bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, salt and grated cheddar.

Cut the butter or margarine into the dry ingredients using a pastry blender or two knives.

Add the milk slowly, stirring only until the soft dough forms a ball.

Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface. Knead lightly for a few seconds.

Pat or roll out the dough to ½ to ¾ inch thickness.

Cut with floured biscuit cutter.

Place the biscuits on the prepared pan.

Bake for 12 to 15 minutes or until biscuits are a golden brown.

Makes 10 - 12 biscuits.

Printable Recipe for MA's Cheddar Biscuits

Making friends with pulled pork

Barbecue pulled pork and coleslaw on Panini bun 

A few posts back I mentioned buying some pork loins at a really good price. That left me one problem: how to use it all. Pulled pork came to mind. The only drawback was that I didn’t really care for pulled pork all that much. I had tasted it for the first time about a dozen years ago in North Carolina. I had been invited to a loading dock lunch with the crew who were working on the new building for which I was doing PR and communications. I felt it was an honour for a corporate type like me to be included. It should have been a great experience, right? I mean barbecued pulled pork was practically born in North Carolina and I’d been told a local caterer known for their barbecue was doing the cooking.

Well, maybe it was just a bad day for the caterer or maybe my Northern Canadian palate simply could not appreciate the legendary culinary offerings of the South. Either way, all I can remember about that lunch was trying to be polite as I ate the cold, greasy, fatty mess of pork plopped on my plate next to the oddly warm puddle of coleslaw and the hard white roll. Not good. Not good at all. In fact, it was enough to keep me far away from pulled pork even as it rose to fame over the next ten years of the foodie explosion and enjoyed increasing popularity with caterers in my part of the world.

Once in a while though, I follow my own advice and I decided to give pulled pork a second chance. I remembered my daughter Keeley telling me she’d made barbecue pulled pork in her slow cooker for a potluck and that she’d been asked for an encore of the dish for the next potluck. I called Keeley for her recipe. (I am so fortunate to have children who not only have grown up to be smarter than me, but to be great cooks, too.) Keeley couldn’t give me the exact recipe she used, because there wasn’t one, but she described her basic technique. I’ve incorporated it here along with the ingredients I used. I found the rub recipe at Steven Raichlen's Barbecue! Bible (he's written 28 books about barbecue so he knows what he's talking about) and the rest of the recipe is gleaned from a combination of recipes from several sites. The result was very, very tasty. I am happy to report that pulled pork and I are once again on the best of terms.

Every bite GONE!

This barbecue pulled pork makes a terrific suppertime sandwich served up on a pillow of a Panini bun with side of homemade coleslaw. As you can see in the photo above, I piled my coleslaw right on top of the pork and it was yummy. You can also serve it over rice or mashed potatoes. Any leftover pulled pork will mix well with baked beans (and I’ll be posting a recipe for making delicious baked beans in a few days).

MA’s Slow Cooker Barbecue Pulled Pork

3 lb pork loin roast

For the Basic Barbecue Rub:

¼ cup coarse salt (kosher or sea salt)

¼ cup brown sugar

¼ cup paprika

3 tbsp freshly ground pepper

1 tbsp garlic powder

1 tbsp dried onion flakes

½ to 1 tsp cayenne pepper

½ tsp celery seeds

Mix together the ingredients for the Basic Barbecue Rub. Put it into a jar as you won’t need the full cup of Rub to make this recipe. Store away from heat and light. It will keep for several months.

For the Slow Cooker:

3 onions, sliced

1 cup barbecue sauce, homemade or purchased

1 cup cooking liquid, either pop or broth or water (I used ginger ale, but read root beer is good, too.)

Rubbed pork the next day

Cover the roast with part of the Rub, massaging and patting it well into the meat.

Place the roast in a covered dish and put in refrigerator over night.

Into the slow cooker

  The next day, place the onions in the bottom of the slow cooker.

  Place the pork roast, fat side up, on top of the onions.

  Add the barbecue sauce and cooking liquid.

  Set slow cooker on low heat and cook for 6 hours.

Pulling the pork

  Remove the pork from the slow cooker and put into a large
  casserole. The meat may fall apart as you move it, so take care
  when lifting it out. Pull the pork apart with two forks. 

  Return meat to slow cooker and cook on low heat for 1 to 1 ½
  hours.

  Serve in sandwiches, over rice or potatoes, or mixed into baked
  beans.

Printable Recipe for MA's Slow Cooker Barbecue Pulled Pork

Pasta with an Oniony Sauce from the Slow Cooker

Pasta with Caramelized Onion, Feta and Italian Sausage

I think I buy more onions than I do any other single vegetable. Every time I make dinner it seems I am chopping onions for something. I am sure I am part of the reason that onions are the second most important horticultural crop after tomatoes. But I don't worry about how much onion I consume. It's said to be effective against many bacteria and even the World Health Organization supports the use of onions for the treatment of poor appetite and to prevent atherosclerosis.

Last spring I cut a recipe out of the newspaper for a slow cooker caramelized onion pasta. It was stuck to the fridge, forgotten until a few days ago when I was looking for something to do with the two bags of yellow onions I bought on sale. I won't share that recipe with you because I didn't have a spare container of creme fraiche or arugula in the kitchen to make it with. But I liked the idea of the recipe, so I tried making it with what I had on hand: spaghetti, some sweet Italian turkey sausages, goat's milk feta, and a jar of sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil. I think you could safely substitute any pasta or sausage and try another type of meltable salty cheese and get a good result. You can drain some of the olive oil from the tomatoes if you like. I didn't drain all of it when I added my tomatoes and I rather liked the creaminess of the dish.

This turned out to be very tasty. In fact, my husband said it was one of the best things I've ever made and was still raving about it the day after I made it. He's such a fan. I love him.

Here's my recipe.

Use processor to make quick work of onions

MA's Pasta with Caramelized Onion, Feta and Italian Sausage

3 lbs yellow onions, thinly sliced
2 tbsp olive oil
1 lb (or 6) Italian sausages, cut into 1” chunks
1 cup sun-dried tomatoes, thinly sliced
500 grams pasta
1 ½ cups feta cheese, drained, divided into 1 cup and ½ cup
fresh ground pepper

In a large slow cooker, place onions, olive oil, sausages and tomatoes. Cook on high for 5 ½ hours.

When onion mixture is cooked, prepare pasta according to package directions. Drain well.

Add pasta to onion mixture. Mix in 1 cup of the feta and season with pepper. 

Crumble remaining feta on top of each serving. 

Makes 6 to 8 servings.

Printable Recipe for MA's Pasta with Caramelized Onions, Feta and Sausage