Sunday, January 8, 2017

Adventures in Slow Cooking, Part V: Curried Chicken Thighs With Mushrooms and Green Beans

Gentle reader, in my ongoing attempts to master cooking with my new slow cooker, I dare say this might have been the most successful yet. Now, I’m not going to lie: This recipe is basically a variation on the Ignorant American Fusion Tikka Masala recipe I recently posted. The biggest difference is, you would really want to use thighs over breasts on this one, because they’re moister (read: fattier), and they will end up shreddy as opposed to chunky. Also I skipped the heavy cream component in the sauce, because I had no idea what consistency that would yield. Maybe next time.

I took maybe 3 pounds of bone-in chicken thighs, deskinned them and trimmed the blobby fat seams with kitchen shears, and rubbed them with a mix of curry powder, paprika, kosher salt, garlic powder, and cumin. (I was pretty generous with this dry rub, because I figured it would kind of dissipate into and flavor the sauce.) I left them in the fridge overnight like this, but eh, you needn’t bother.

I laid these over a bed of diced onion in the slow cooker, added some halved button mushrooms and chopped green beans, and poured a 29-oz. can of tomato puree and a splash of chicken stock over the whole mess. Then I cooked it on low for, I don’t know, 10-to-12-odd hours.

Let’s pretend that this was served over rice, because it should have been, and I don’t want to talk about why it wasn’t (hint: it involved leaving the bar after the Chinese restaurant was closed, and that’s all I’ll say).

If you wanted to get some kind of creamy vibe going on (sorry, that sounded wrong), I would say add a dollop of yogurt on top of each bowl. Maybe scatter some chopped cilantro over them too; I think I originally meant to do this but forgot, because the bar.

This was quite flavorful, and reasonably healthy even. Plus, with this dish I unlocked a new achievement level vis-à-vis slow-cooker-sauce-consistency. Highly recommended as a one-dish weeknight meal. Preferably on a weeknight you haven't spent at the bar.

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