I was searching around for slow cooker recipes and thought the Food Network‘s Web site was good place to start. There’s always so much hype around those recipes.
I came across one that had so many bad reviews, and I mean really bad reviews, that my competitive nature just kicked in and I felt I had no choice but to see if I could do better. I had another reason for wanting to make it: I had grown garlic in my herb garden this year and really needed a recipe that required a lot of garlic. Looks like I found it.
You can see the original recipe here; below is my revised one. This dinner turned out delicious and was so easy to make. Great for a day when you really don’t want to throw dinner together at the last minute and don’t have a lot of time for prep work.
(My) Lemon Garlic Chicken
Ingredients:
4 skinless boneless chicken breasts (or more if you need them)
3 lemons juiced (about 1/4 cup)
1 3/4 cup chicken broth
1 onion cut in half vertically then thinly sliced
8 cloves of garlic, peeled and smashed then coarsely chopped
8 carrots, peeled (I bought a big bunch at the farmer’s market and needed to do something with them)
Dried parsley
3 sprigs fresh rosemary (I had a bunch in my herb garden)
Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper
What’s Next:
- Season chicken with salt and pepper. Set aside.
- Saute onion and garlic in a small pan with some olive oil. Transfer to slow cooker.
- Add chicken, carrots, chicken broth, lemon juice and dried parsley to slow cooker. Stir to combine ingredients.
- Cover and cook on high for 6 hours.
- During the last 30-45 minutes add the rosemary.
Notes from my experience:
The original recipe called for cooking the rice in the slow cooker with everything else. In my house, dinner time varies from night to night by about an hour. I made rice on the side. No need to complicate things.
In an effort to capitalize on the flavors of fresh garlic and onion, I chose to saute the onion and garlic first, which was not part of the original recipe. From experience, raw onions thrown into a slow cooker produce a very strong smell that is not nearly as delicious as when they are pre-cooked.
I love that the recipe does not require precooking the chicken.
As for the vegetables in the recipe, I added carrots because I had them. Depending on the vegetables and how much time you have to plan ahead, you could add just about anything that’s in season now: string beans, wax beans, corn, zucchini, yellow squash or tomatoes. For most of them though, I wouldn’t add more them more than 30 to 40 minutes before you plan to serve the meal.
