The original recipe (called Chicken with Bacon, Swiss and Mushrooms) came from the “Fix-It and Forget-It” cookbook; the “Our best slow-cooker recipes 2009″ in particular. I made some adjustments, mainly to shorten the cooking time and I accidentally forgot the Swiss, so of course, I had to change the title, ‘coz it would not have made any sense otherwise, would it?
By the way, I cook usually with the unsalted, ’sweet’ butter and to keep the butter from burning too much, I use some vegetable oil to get it nice and hot, but still have the butter flavor.
Okay here it goes:
1/2 package Oscar Mayer Bacon pieces* 5 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves 8 oz. fresh mushrooms, cleaned and sliced** 10 3/4 can cream of condensed chicken soup about 1/3 cup Schmitt Söhne Riesling wine2 tbsp sweet butter vegetable oil
* I used the pieces because they are larger than the bacon-bits
** I guess the fresh mushrooms could be substituted with canned ones (what the recipe originally calls for), but I prefer fresh shrooms and I did have some that urgently needed to be used.
In my cast iron pot, I melted the butter and added the vegetable oil. After the butter was completely melted and the oil was nice and hot, I added the bacon bits and swirled them around a little to get the bacon flavor ‘evenly distributed’. Since the chicken that I had bought came in a 5-pack, I cooked 3 chicken breasts in the bacon/butter mix over medium heat for 3 to 5 minutes until light brown, turning them once. Then I cooked the other 2. My pot, however, nicely holds 4 large chicken breasts in one single layer at the bottom without crowding. This is, of course, after they had already shrunk a little during the browning. Anyway, to solve the dilemma of the 5th browned but not fully cooked piece, it got chopped up, microwaved until completely cooked, and fed as a special treat to my dogs.
Back to the recipe: Top the chicken breasts in the cast-iron pot with mushrooms. Add the soup (I stirred the soup so I did not have one big ‘blob’ come out of the can) and spread it over the chicken and mushrooms. Add the wine. Cover and cook on medium/low for about 45 minutes.
Note: I cooked the chicken for 45 minutes and they were no longer pink inside and still nice and juicy. However, they were still a little tough. I am not sure if cooking them longer would have made them more tender. On the other hand, out of principle, I only use farm-raised chicken meat and maybe that had something to do with the chicken breasts still being a little tough). One thing I wanted to avoid is overcooking the chicken and then having a dried-out piece of tough chicken. I have done that before and that does not taste good either.
Next thing I am going to try is cutting the breasts up into 1 inch cubes. See if that makes a difference. I would imagine that the cooking time would shorten. I wonder if the flavors would be any different?
Another thing to note: now that I know that my pot holds 4 pieces nicely, I will have to come up with a plan. Ideally, I would only buy a package of 4 chicken breast halves. But if that’s unavailable I should probably either just cook only 4 and use the other for a different recipe. However, what can one do with just one chicken-breast, especially when you also have a hubby to feed? Of course, if I end up cutting up the chicken breasts into 1 inch cubes, then the 5th piece can easily be added as long as I brown the pieces in batches. jI’ll have to try that . . . next time.
Well, for those that try this recipe: I hope you like it as much as I (and Brian) did! Enjoy.
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