Sesame Chicken In The Slow Cooker

Yet another easy slow cooker recipe!

This was my first time ever cooking asian-style food, unless you count marinating steaks in teriyaki sauce. I love teriyaki, but don't eat a lot of other asian foods because I'm very allergic to MSG. I've been to Chinese restaurants that have claimed they don't use MSG, but trust me, they do! I puke for 12 hours straight if I eat too much MSG, so it's just not worth the risk.

But now that I'm on a cooking kick, I thought I'd pull an asian-style recipe out of our slow cooker cookbook and try some Sesame Chicken, which couldn't have been easier to make.

Layer the bottom of the slow cooker with 2 tablespoons of sesame oil, then add 6 chicken breasts on top.


Now, the recipe called for 3 cloves of garlic....which to me is always confusing. Do they mean 3 of the individual cloves, or three full cloves? I'm thinking they meant 3 of the individual cloves, since this cookbook seems to always go light on the spices. So I chopped 2 full coves and added them on top of the chicken! Mmmmm, garlicky!


Following the garlic, I layered a cup of brown sugar and 6 tablespoons of soy sauce in the slow cooker, and it was ready to cook for 4 hours.


Once the chicken was done, there was some sauce in the cooker, so I decided to make some noodles to go with it. I added about another 1/4 cup of brown sugar and about 2 tablespoons of sesame oil while the noodles were cooking for a little more sauce and flavor, and then just threw the cooked noodles in and stirred.


Another delish meal, if I do say so myself. I'm just in love with our slow cooker, and how it makes meat so soft it melts in your mouth!


Are there any styles of food you've never cooked before?

I Deserve a Gold Star (Slow Cooker Attempt #2)

For making a REAL, full on dinner!

Like, not just a main dish, and throwing together a salad, or just eating that one main dish by itself. No, this dinner had 3 whole dishes, and the best part? We got 6 days of dinner out of the main course: Jack Daniels Beef Brisket!

This was my second attempt at using our new slow cooker, and I had much better results than the first time. I think from these two tries, I can conclude that our slow cooker runs a bit warmer than some, so I need to err on the low side of the cooking times listed in my cook book.

The recipe was so easy, just 5 ingredients that you basically just throw in the cooker!


Pour 1 cup of the Jack Daniels BBQ sauce in the bottom, then layer a medium onion cut into wedges, and beef bouillon cubes. The recipe called for 3 bouillon cubes, but the slab of brisket I found was 4.87 lbs, as opposed to the 3-4 lbs the recipe called for, so I used an extra one. Plus I didn't want to end up with another flavorless slow cooker meal like last time!


Then you throw the brisket on top of the onions, and place bay leaves on top. Again, I used 1 extra because of the oversized chunk of meat. And by the way, these were fresh bay leaves! I don't think I had bay leaves in my collection of 7 year old spices, but I bought a new container at the store anyway.


After cooking for 6 1/2 hours (recipe recommended 6 1/2 to 8 1/2 with a 3 to 4 lb brisket), it was done! And a bit too juicy. At this point the recipe says to remove the meat, tear it up a bit, add another cup of the BBQ sauce to it, and let it cook for an additional half hour.


But with all this juice, I thought it was a bit much, so I took about half of it out before adding the additional BBQ sauce.


After shredding the brisket, putting it back in the cooker, and adding the BBQ sauce, I just stirred it and let it sit on the Warm setting for about 20 minutes. The meat was done, and I didn't want to get into an over-cooked situation again, so the extra cooking time in the recipe was unnecessary. And look, all ready to eat, along with fresh baked corn bread muffins and cheesy broccoli (the broccoli was frozen, but still!).


When the hubs came out in to the kitchen to see my nicely prepared and presented meal, his comment was, "Smells good, but the platter is a little unnecessary." Uh, duh!

But pretty kitchen things make me happier about doing the cooking, which I still don't really enjoy, but am trying to.

Slow Cooker 1st Attempt: Only A Somewhat Success

Alright. Cooking. Yeah…..

So I’ll preface this post by saying, I DO know how to cook. Kind of. I don’t have a huge repertoire, but I can usually throw something together that won’t give you food poisoning. And when in doubt, I just put some more garlic powder on it and call it good.

But I swear, cooking is NOT like riding a bike, you do forget stuff and lose your skills over time.

I haven’t really cooked anything for a good….9 months? Since before Christmas at least. And I don’t count microwaving and then mixing pre-cooked chicken with frozen veggies as cooking. Or heating up frozen dinners in the oven (although I will give a shout out to Safeway brand Eating Right meals, they’re all under 350 calories, and pretty healthy, except for all the sodium. They have a big variety too, so you can, literally, eat them 5 days a week for months and not get too bored. Yeah, know that from experience!).

But now that I’m a newlywed, and trying to be domestic (or just not die of non-crafting boredom), I’m going to make an attempt to cook more. I’m starting slow though, with some casseroles and slow cooker recipes, meals that only involve one night of cooking for several nights of food in return.

For my first attempt, I opted to use our brand new slow cooker (thanks to The Mr.’s co-workers), and the Fix It and Forget It cookbook, to make 20 Clove Garlic Chicken.

I was a good little blogger, and took step by step pictures, but I’m not sure they’re really worth posting because the dish only turned out just ok. The chicken was falling apart soft, but could have been a little less done. I’m not sure how it was both soft and dry, but it was. I blame that on having never used the slow cooker before, so I wasn’t 100% sure on the timing, especially when all the recipes give you a range of cooking times, with lots of non-specific notes on adjustments for different sized slow cookers.

The other problem? No flavor.


The recipe called for 2 tablespoons of parsley, 1 tablespoon of both basil and oregano, 20 cloves of garlic, some celery, ¼ cup of wine, and juice and zest from one lemon. For 6 pieces of chicken breast. You would think that would be enough spices, right? Especially with all that garlic.

But sadly it wasn’t. At all. It was nothing that some BBQ sauce couldn’t fix, and we still ate it, so it was a somewhat success. But by itself there wasn’t much taste, and even the garlic cloves themselves were mushy and nearly flavorless.

I’m guessing I went wrong in one of two places. 1) My spices are old? I don’t know, do spices go bad or lose their flavor over time? I have no idea, but I guarantee some of them are probably 7-8 years old. And from the dollar store. Or 2) the flavor went away because of the overcooking?

Is anyone else out there familiar with slow cooking and can tell me where I went wrong? Or was it just not a very good recipe and didn’t call for enough spices? I really don’t know enough to be able to tell, especially since I usually just season things to taste without much measuring.

And because I figure I might as well not waste them, here are the pictures I took while making the slow cooker chicken. It did not take the 10 minutes prep time listed in the book though, more like 40 minutes, because peeling garlic is time consuming! But basically I combined the spices and wine, added the garlic and celery, stirred and set them aside, then added the chicken to the spice mixture and left overnight. The next morning I just layered the garlic and celery in the bottom of the cooker, added the chicken, and topped off with the lemon juice, leftover spice mixture and the lemon zest. The recipe was followed, and it actually looked yummy, but just lacked any flavor. Please tell me why!


(The side dish of steamed red potatoes with sauteed garlic and butter was much better than the slow cooker chicken)

But Oh Yeah, I Don’t Really Bake

I just saw these adorable cookie cutters on a Weddingbee post, and immediately went to the Williams-Sonoma website to scope them out.

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Just imagine the cute messages you could bake into cookies! Thoughts of sweet messages for my husband and fun industry-related phrases for my office immediately swarmed my mind. Oh, the possibilities to amaze and astound my family and friends with my awesome culinary skills.

But then I realized that, oh yeah, I don’t really bake.

I mean, I know how to make cookies, sure, and quite a few other desserts. I make maybe one or two batches of cookies a year. But I don’t really like sweets that much, including cookies, and besides, they wouldn’t be good for my healthy (err, healthier) eating goals.

So for $19.95, I think I’ll resist the initial temptation to order these. I’m pretty sure the $19.97 I just spent on buying the Fix-It and Forget-It slow cooker cookbook off our own registry will be a much better investment, considering it has 1,400 recipes, and I’ve never used a slow cooker before.

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So, no adorable cookie pictures will be shared anytime soon on this blog. But maybe I’ll have a story or two about my crock-pot successes. Or maybe I just fail at being domestic, we shall see! Just don’t tell The Mr. that I passed on making him cute cookies, because he would love for me to start baking!

Have you ever gotten sucked in by a kitchen or home product, only to realize that you’ll likely never use it?