Slow Cooker Chicken Cacciatore
Speed - 96%
Simplicity - 99%
Tastiness - 100%
98%
Delicious!
This is a really delicious all-in-one-pot pasta dish. Really simple to do and will surely be loved by the whole family. Chicken Cacciatore doesn't have to be reserved for those times out at the expensive Italian restaurant. You can make this at home for cheap, and passively in a slow cooker.
Ingredients
- 6 pieces Chicken Thighs bone-in
- 1 cup Olives pitted
- 6 cloves garlic crushed
- 1 can Diced Tomatoes
- 1 piece White Onion large, cut into chunks
- 1 cup Chicken Broth
- 1 cups White Wine
- Flour for dredging
- 1 teaspoon Dried Thyme
- 1 teaspoons Dried Oregano
- Parmesan cheese for topping
- Fresh Basil for garnish
- Salt to taste
- Pepper to taste
Instructions
- Season chicken thighs with salt and pepper.
- Dredge in flour, patting off excess.
- Heat about half-inch deep amount of oil in a pan and lightly brown chicken on both sides.
- Remove chicken pieces and some oil from the pan.
- Sautee garlic, onions, and olives.
- Deglaze with white wine then add chicken stock.
- Transfer to a slow cooker along with the canned tomatoes and dried herbs.
- Arrange chicken pieces on top.
- Cook on low for 4 hours.
- Serve with pasta topped with parmesan cheese and fresh basil.
This is like fried chicken and pasta in a one-pot dish. Well that's at least what my son thought, and yes did he enjoy dinner!
Technically, it's not. The chicken, though starting off in the pan for frying, actually finished off poaching in a tomato based sauce which eventually ended up tossed with the pasta.
Pollo Cacciatore is a dish of Italian origin which directly translates into hunter's chicken, pretty much describing how it was typically prepared – the hunter's way. A few chunks of chicken or game and carelessly chopped wild produce left to cook in a pot without much supervision.
Since we're doing this in a slow cooker we know that the chicken has to be browned in a skillet or it'll end up looking non-appetizingly pale.
Let's get going. Start off with a basic seasoning of salt and pepper. You may add in any dried herbs at this stage to give those chicken thighs a bit more depth of flavor. I used dried thyme and dried oregano which really pairs up well with chicken. I'd reserve stonger-flavored herbs like rosemary for more robust meats like beef or lamb. A basic guide is, the tougher an herb's structure, the stronger its flavor.
Next would be to dredge them in a bit of flour, and shake off any excess. We want the flour to aid in browning the chicken, and an excessively thick coating will just make the chicken end up really soggy.
Time to give those thighs some color in some oil. Don't cook them through or they'll dry up. A nice brown crust would be perfect. By the way, feel free to substitute any part of chicken for this recipe.
Drain the chicken pieces out of the oil, and pour off the oil from the pan leaving about a tablespoon or two. You may do this in a separate pan if you wish. I just want to work on those flavors the chicken may have left from frying.
Add in the olives, onions, and garlic for a quick sautee to allow their natural sugars to caramelize a bit. The moisture that'll leak out from them would also help deglaze the pan of all those flavors.
From here, we're done. We're allowing the dish to completely finish the hunter's way – unattended in the slow cooker for four hours on low. Setting it for a longer time would unnecessarily dry up the chicken.
Not letting your chicken cook too long is one of the reasons I prefer a programmable slow cooker. Recently I tested the 6-quart Crock-Pot Smart Pot (perfect size for a family meal) which has 4, 6, 8, and 10 hour settings. It's easy to start your meal slow cooking just by pressing a button. If you wanted a bit more versatility in programming you may want to check out the Crock Pot programmable slow cooker.
This dish is made to be paired with pasta. That cooking liquid left in the pot makes for a perfect tomato-based sauce.
Top it with fresh basil leaves for a bit of freshness and extra aroma. Shave in a generous amount of parmesan for extra flavor. Any hard grating cheese would work too.
One little modification I did while prepping this dish was tossing the freshly cooked pasta in some butter before adding in the sauce. I wanted that extra richness from the butter to mask a bit of the tomato's acidity. This is not how I would like mine, but had to do it for my son's taste. I ended up liking it as much.
Ingredients
- 6 pieces Chicken Thighs bone-in
- 1 cup Olives pitted
- 6 cloves garlic crushed
- 1 can Diced Tomatoes
- 1 piece White Onion large, cut into chunks
- 1 cup Chicken Broth
- 1 cups White Wine
- Flour for dredging
- 1 teaspoon Dried Thyme
- 1 teaspoons Dried Oregano
- Parmesan cheese for topping
- Fresh Basil for garnish
- Salt to taste
- Pepper to taste
Instructions
- Season chicken thighs with salt and pepper.
- Dredge in flour, patting off excess.
- Heat about half-inch deep amount of oil in a pan and lightly brown chicken on both sides.
- Remove chicken pieces and some oil from the pan.
- Sautee garlic, onions, and olives.
- Deglaze with white wine then add chicken stock.
- Transfer to a slow cooker along with the canned tomatoes and dried herbs.
- Arrange chicken pieces on top.
- Cook on low for 4 hours.
- Serve with pasta topped with parmesan cheese and fresh basil.
Leave a Reply