I’m thinking of getting a crock pot, and have recipe in mind, want to know if it’ll work. (i.e. be edible)
Cream of chix soup+white rice+mixed veggies=chicken a la king?
Sounds good. Frozen veggies, chicken parts (not the whole chicken), uncooked rice, not Minute Rice. You might need to add some liquid. I’ve done something similar in the oven and it was pretty good.
What time is dinner?
Pam-forgot the H20. Dinner as soon as I have the pot. 
No H2O! There’s enough water in the chicken and the soup. Adding more will dilute the chickeney goodness.
I did this last week, actually. A few chicken legs, skin removed (too much grease in the skin), a splash of white wine, some cream o’ mushroom soup (I used Progresso’s, because it’s gluten free), some chopped up shallots, celery, carrots, sliced mushrooms, salt and pepper. A bit of thyme and some parsley for looks. A bay leaf for luck. Turned it on low and let it go.
I had planned on thickening the gravy when done and serving a nice chicken leg on a bed of rice with the veggies/gravy ladled over it. The chicken got away from me though, and the legs fell apart. So I pulled them out, let them cool a bit and then took the meat off the bones. Thickened what was left in the Crock Pot with a corn starch slurry, threw the chicken back in and served the now Chicken Stew over rice cooked separately, but I could just as easily have thrown some rice into the Crock Pot for the last hour or so of cooking (had I been home then) and had a Chicken ala King casserole.
Crock Pots are awesome. I have three, in various sizes (small round for dips, queso and fondue, medium oval for dinner for the four of us and a big ol’ round one for potlucks.)
You really don’t need a slow cooker for this recipe, though it’s nice to be able to set a dinner going in the morning, go off to work or school, and come home to a house that smells delicious.
For your recipe, use chicken parts or cut up a whole chicken. You can use just about any “cream of” soup that you like, or make your own white sauce, or just use some chicken broth. Cream of onion is pretty salty, even for my taste, by the way. You can stick the whole concoction in a casserole dish, cover it, and let it bake in the oven. You’ll get about the same results as you would from a slow cooker.
A slow cooker’s main advantage is that it’s SLOW. The ones with a removable liner are the best, as you can assemble dinner the night before, put it all in the liner, and put the liner in the fridge. Next morning, you put the liner in the base and set it going. And dinner will be done in somewhere between 8-10 hours, and usually it can stay in cooking mode even longer. With an oven, if you don’t pull it out when it’s done, you run the risk of burning dinner.
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:smack:
I honestly never thought of assembling dinner the night before, but by gum, you’re right!
Personally I would be a bit wary of putting rice in a crock pot. Though there is a lot of liquid coming out of the chicken and the veggies to add to the soup and water, I am not sure it is enough to not make a gluey mess. I would maybe add a can of chicken broth (or homemade if you have it) and then if need be thicken it up at the end.
That’s the best part of the new crockpots!
Rice is one of those things I’d be inclined to add later so it doesn’t end up a complete mush, but it might work.
And here I’ve been getting up early before work to throw food in the Crock Pot when it’s my day to cook! I can’t tell you what an idiot I feel right now.
I find it can handle 30 to 45 on low with liquid that’s bubbling hot already. But, let’s be honest…if I was going to be home 45 minutes before dinnertime, I could cook a skillet or even oven meal. I’m hardly ever home at the right time to add the rice, so I cook the rice separately - either in the small Crock-Pot or in my Rice Cooker.
Well now you know and you can sleep in a little.
When I make soup with noodles or rice I do that. They get cooked separately and the soup gets poured over because I will have leftovers and I don’t want complete mush in my soup.
I’m being a downer, but I have had various crock pots over the years. Still have one, but I fail to see ther appeal.
Sure, you can buy cheaper cuts of meat and slow cook. However, I don’t know of any recipe that is better in a crockpot than cooked in a casserole or similar.
Plus if you’re Making chilli you don’t have to go to work smelling like a tex mex place if you sear and roast everything the night before
Anything where the flavor is better the next day, for starters, like many stews and similar dishes. The long cooking time helps get some of that flavor right away.
I find that brown rice holds up fine, but white rice ends up mushy. For that real chicken-ala-king flavor though, you should really add some pimento*. It makes all the difference. Also you need garlic and cracked black pepper.
*Someone else already mentioned mushrooms, you need those too.
Chicken stock, for sure. Not so much better tasting, but far easier. Throw in chicken scraps and vegetables (frozen peels and ends of veggies I’ve used in the prior month is what I use), add water, salt and herbs and leave it. Come back some time the next day and strain and chill. No skimming, no babysitting the simmer, no adding water if it boils too high and evaporates. It just magically turns kitchen scraps into stock!
I prefer beef stew from the Crock Pot than the stove top or oven. I want my stew meat just this side of self-shredding in tenderness, and that just takes longer than I want to babysit a pot or run my oven.
Ropa Vieja. OMG good from a Crock Pot, pretty darn good from a Dutch Oven.
“Cheating” Pulled Pork. Yes, yes, I know it’s not real unless it’s been smoked in your grill for at least 6 hours. But it tastes great and needn’t be reserved for weekend cooking if you throw a pork shoulder into the Crock Pot with some sliced onions, some BBQ sauce, tomato sauce, splash of apple cider vinegar, a few teeny drops of Liquid Smoke (unless you’re using a smoky BBQ sauce), cumin, salt, peppercorns and the ubiquitous bay leaf (mental note: need more bay leaves). When you come back to it 8 or 10 or 12 hours later, the meat shreds itself as you spoon it out of the Crock Pot. You can toss the shreds with bottled sauce, or you can thicken the sauce you’ve got in the pot and adjust the flavor to taste. Serve in a pile or on buns, and it’s freaking good. If you’re partial to the dried out bits of pulled pork, this isn’t a version for you, but if you like succulent moist gelatin coated pulled pork, you’ll love it.
This. Especially the bit about not babysitting the stock. Now, sometimes I will degrease the stock ONE time, using one of those fat separators. But just once while it’s cooking. I can get the rest of the fat out when the stock is done, or after it chills. A chicken has an amazing amount of fat in it. I will remove all of the skin from my portion of a roast chicken and put it back to make stock of, and I carve most of the meat from the bone before serving, so I’ll have some skin and bones along with the neck, backbone, and wingtips for the stock.