Slow-cooker chicken thigh dish ideal for spring
My slow cooker sits, forgotten, at the back of a cupboard for long periods of time. While it’s a convenient appliance, it takes planning ahead. You have to know what you want to eat for dinner 4 to 8 hours before, and that rarely happens around this house.
But when I do plan ahead and toss everything in before leaving the house in the morning, it is enormously satisfying to pull into the garage to be greeted by the cozy aroma of a fully cooked dinner, before even setting foot in the house.
Cooking in the slow cooker
feels like something that should be done in fall or winter, but as temperatures get warmer (that’s still happening this year, right?), the slow cooker is still the perfect appliance because it cooks a meal without turning on the stove and heating up the kitchen.
And as much as I love a good sautéed skillet meal, that technique is all about building layers of flavor, and it takes time to sauté the aromatics, bloom the spices, brown the meat and add the veggies. There’s something freeing about chopping everything and dumping it all into a pot at once, and it’s fast and easy.
Here are a few other ideas for slow cooker meals for spring and summer:
Cook chicken thighs with a can of diced tomatoes and spices like cumin, cayenne and coriander for easy chicken tacos.
A pork shoulder can be turned into barbecue pulled-pork sandwiches over the course of a day and served with cool, crunchy slaw.
Use fresh garden produce to make a slow-simmered minestrone soup.
Today’s dish, adapted from skinnytaste.com, is a nice recipe for this transitional season. The warm spices are comforting, but it is brightened up with green olives and finished with lemon juice and fresh parsley.
Chicken thighs are the perfect protein for a slow cooker. They are inexpensive, they hold up with long, slow cooking, and the best part is you can put them in frozen.