Slow Cooker Chicken Chili

Sometimes, it's nice to come home to a warm dinner ready and waiting. No fuss, just great food with little effort. I love slow cooker recipes for just that reason. This recipe is delicious, fast to prepare, and great as leftovers (the next day or frozen for later).

The list of ingredients is plenty long, but don't be discouraged. Most of them are common household spices and pantry items, not fancy expensive ingredients. The only ingredients we bought for this recipe were two cans of beans and the sweet potato. So, pretty inexpensive.

 

2 lb ground chicken, coarsely ground preferred
3 tbsp chili powder, plus 2 tsp
1 (15-ounce) can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 (15-ounce) can white beans, drained and rinsed
2 (28-ounce) cans diced fire roasted tomatoes
1 medium sweet potato, peeled and shredded
2 cups chicken stock (ours was homemade and contained no salt - vary your salt accordingly)
1/4 cup instant tapioca
1 to 2 chipotle chiles in adobo sauce with seeds, chopped
2 tbsp low-sodium soy sauce
1 tbsp kosher salt
1 tbsp onion powder
2 tsp granulated garlic
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
a pinch ground cloves
1/2 to 3/4 cup lager-style beer (I used Beck's Octoberfest - I'm a sucker for all Octoberfest beers, especially Sam Adams)
1 avocado (per two servings), optional
1 bunch cilantro (stems removed), optional
Cheese, grated (we used Rustico Red Pepper), optional

Start with the ground chicken. Nick recently got a meat grinder, so we ground some chicken we had stored in the freezer. It used up most of the legs and thighs we had stored and we were happy to gain the freezer space.

When you are ready (about 6-8 hours before you want to eat), add all the ingredients to the crock pot except 2 tsp of chili powder and the beer. If you have a slow cooker with a removable pot, you can do this the night before and store overnight, covered, in the fridge (our preferred method).

Turn the slow cooker on low for 6-8 hours. Just before serving, stir in the beer and remaining chili powder. Spoon into serving bowls.

I like to serve with grated cheese, cubed avocado, cilantro leaves and crusty bread.

This recipe is adapted from this recipe, by Food Network.

Kitchen Lifesaver: Chicken Stock

We use chicken stock for all sorts of things: sauces, risotto, casseroles, just to name a few so it's always good to have on hand. It's so expensive to buy ready-made in the box (and even the low sodium contains more than this does - which is none), and so cheap to make at home that it's one of those things we just can't justify spending our grocery money on.

To start, freeze chicken remains/carcasses as you purchase them. Keep the bones, the skin, any remaining meat. Discard the innards. We usually get two whole chickens at a time, but need four to get a good, hearty stock. We just keep the two in the freezer until we get the second two to make the stock. Thaw all the chickens in a large stock pot. 

Add the veggies and herbs. We use:

1 large onion, quartered

4 carrots, peeled and cut in half

4 ribs of celery, cut in half

1 leek, white part only, cut in half lengthwise

10 sprigs fresh thyme

10 sprigs fresh parsley with stems

2 bay leaves

8 to 10 peppercorns

2 whole cloves garlic, peeled

 

Add 30 cups of water to the pot. Once you have added 24 cups, take a mental note of the water level. Ours is usually somewhere around the steamer basket we use to keep all the goods submerged.

Simmer, simmer, simmer. But DO NOT BOIL! In the first hour, you'll see scum (gross white stuff in picture) bubble to the surface. Strain this off the top with a fine mesh strainer and discard. Keep an eye on it for the first hour or so to make sure you keep it at a simmer (not a boil!) and to remove the scum.

Simmer for 6-8 hours. If the water level gets to about that 24 cup mark you made a mental note of, add a bit of water. Don't add to much or it will reduce the concentrated flavor of the stock, but try and keep it around 24 cups total. Once you are at the 6-8 hour mark, the stock has reduced down to the 24 cup mark, test to see if the stock is done by fishing out a bone. If it breaks easily, the stock is done. Remove from the heat and strain the solids out from the stock*.

To cool down quickly, have an ice bath prepared in a large cooler. Place the strained stock container directly in the cooler and cover the lid. For even faster cooling, we stick plastic bottles in the freezer filled with water and place directly into the pot and then place in the cooler. Once the temperature lowers, you can place the stock pot it the refrigerator. Leave in the fridge overnight and remove the fat from the top the next day.

To keep for longer periods (if kept in the fridge, 2-3 days is the maximum), store in the freezer. For easy storing, that's also organized, follow the instructions below:

Place plastic zip top bags into plastic containers. I like the blue top, screw on lid containers from Zip-Loc as they are the perfect size for two cups of stock.

I prefer to measure the stock as it goes into each container/bag because that way we know when thawing how much we need to pull from the freezer. We usually throw in a couple 1 cup quantities as well.

Once the two cups is in the bag, seal the bag and fold into the container. Seal with the lid and place in the freezer.

Once the stock is frozen, you can remove it from the container and they will keep their shape, allowing you to easily keep them stacked and organized in the freezer without monopolizing all your Tupperware.

*If you are adventurous, keep the bits of meat that are strained from the stock. It makes a delicious chicken salad, although it takes a bit of patience to remove from the bones.

Grilled Chicken Pita Sandwich with Basil Spread

This was a leftover meal - you know, a meal made from all the extra bits lying around the fridge and freezer. We had some bean & basil spread leftover, and a half a roasted red pepper from our artichoke dip, so we pulled some pita that Nick had made a while back from the freezer and grabbed a chicken breast from there, too. It all came together in this Grilled Chicken Pita Sandwich with Basil Spread. It was a pretty tasty meal and I was happy to use up some of the odds and ends. 

We simply grilled the chicken and reheated the pitas in our toaster oven. Spread some of the bean spread and shove a slice or two of red pepper in the top. We served alongside some extra bean spread.

Chicken Kabobs

Here in Florida, even though it isn't unbearably hot yet, cooking indoors right now increases the temperature of our apartment so much that it's uncomfortable. This is why we love our grill. Tonight we fired it up to cook grilled chicken and vegetable kabobs. To compliment the chicken we used a colorful mix of vegetables: beets, white onion, green pepper and pineapple.

Ingredients:
1/2 green pepper
1/2 white onion
2 medium beets, steamed until tender, skin removed
2 c pineapple
1 chicken breast
olive oil
salt and pepper
seasonings or rub - we used a chili lime rub we had on hand

Turn the grill on to heat. Cut the chicken into 1" size pieces and season with the oil, salt, pepper and seasonings. Toss to coat and set aside. Cut the veggies into similar size cubes (to even cooking time). Place the chicken on skewers.

We put the chicken on first, for a total of about 8 minutes, turning once (but your cooking time would depend on the heat of your grill). While the chicken is cooking, make the vegetable skewers. Once we took off the chicken, we put the veggie skewers on the grill. I let those grill for about 5 minutes on one side to get a nice char, and then flipped to get light marks on the other side.

Remove the skewers from the grill and slide the chicken and veggies off the skewers and onto a serving plate. Toss the chicken and veggies together and serve.

Coconut Mango Chicken

After we made the coconut mango rice with the snapper a couple weeks ago, I really wanted to make something else with coconut. After scouring our cookbooks and magazines, I decided to try this recipe (found in Rachel Ray magazine) for coconut mango chicken. We served with a side of black beans we had already made previously. This is definitely a keeper for us, it was pretty effortless to make, quick to pull together and tasted wonderful.

Ingredients:
1 tbsp olive oil
1 boneless chicken breasts, cut into strips
1 tsp ground coriander
1/4 c. chicken stock
1/2 c. coconut milk
1/2 mango, peeled and cut into 1/2" pieces
salt and pepper
mint, chopped fine to garnish

Start by heating the oil in a large skillet. Add the chicken strips and cook, turning once, to brown all sides. Add the coriander to the pan and stir for about 30 seconds. Then add in the chicken broth, lower the heat and simmer for 3 minutes. Scrape any brown bits from the bottom of the pan and transfer the chicken to a plate. Pour the coconut milk into the pan and increase the heat to bring the milk mixture up to a boil. Reduce the volume by half. Once the milk is reduced, stir in the mango and heat until warm. Add the chicken and toss to coat. Season with salt and pepper to taste and garnish with mint. This recipe serves 2.