Slow Cooked: 200 exciting, new recipes for your slow cooker (13 page)

If you are serving the chicken as cold cuts rather than a roast, reserve the juices and add to the stock you make from the bones. They will become jellied as they set in the fridge. Don’t worry about this. It’s a sign of the very best stock possible.

Carve the chicken and serve with the gravy for the easiest chicken dinner you’ll ever make.

Note:
There are endless possibilities to flavour this dish aside from the basic lemon and salt and pepper. You could add fresh sage or tarragon to the cavity. You could rub the skin with paprika or garlic. Whatever you do, don’t skip the lemon. A preserved one like
here
works beautifully. Just use slightly less salt when seasoning the skin.

Poaching a chicken is so simple in the slow cooker and creates incredibly moist chicken that keeps well without drying out. It also creates a wonderful golden chicken stock as it cooks that you can use for soups or a risotto. I cook mine overnight, strip the meat off the bones and then put them back in the slow cooker with some carrot and celery and make a second batch of equally good stock. I can get a week’s worth of meals out of a poached chicken this way, making it incredibly frugal and delicious.

SERVES 4

1 whole chicken, approximately 1.5–1.7kg in weight

1.25 litres cold water

2 carrots, peeled

2 stalks of celery

salt and pepper

When I said this was simple, I really meant it. Allow your chicken to come to room temperature before poaching. I take mine out of the fridge about an hour beforehand.

Check to see if the chicken fits in your slow-cooker crock. I quite often have to cut mine in half with poultry shears and put the two halves on top of each other. Fit them snugly into the crock and then cover the chicken with about 500ml of the cold water. The bird should be as well submerged as possible, so you may need a bit more water depending on its size.

Add the salt and pepper. Put the lid on and cook on low for 7–8 hours. The stock will be golden and glorious and the chicken so tender, it is almost falling apart. Remove it from the crock very carefully so it doesn’t collapse.

Reserve the first batch of stock. Remove the meat from the chicken carcass and then put the stripped bones back into the crock. Cover them all with the remaining cold water, about 750ml, add the carrot and celery and cook for another 8 hours on low.

Keep the chicken and the stock in the fridge until needed.

The best thing about buying a whole chicken is that you can then make chicken stock. However, it can be a temperamental beast when made on the hob: it mustn’t boil, you need to top the water up to prevent it burning and you need to keep skimming it to keep it clear. It’s quite a labour of love. In the slow cooker though, it’s ridiculously easy.

MAKES 1.2 LITRES

1 chicken carcass

any remaining chicken thigh bones you’ve frozen

1 carrot

2 stalks of celery

1.2 litres cold water

salt and white pepper

Use either raw or cooked chicken bones for this. Strip any cooked meat from the chicken. Put the bones into the slow-cooker crock along with any remaining skin or joints. Add the carrot and celery. Cover it all with the cold water.

Season well with salt and white pepper (as instructed by my friend Carolyne who makes extraordinarily good chicken soup and knows that it tastes even better when the stock remains clear and black-speck free). Put the lid on and cook it on low for 8 hours. Allow to cool and store in the fridge or freezer until needed. (The stock will become jellied as it cools.)

I love gravy. I learned everything I know about this beautiful brown elixir from my mum. I have made this gravy from the juices of slow-cooked chicken, a brined turkey and batches of pulled pork and it has worked every time. This is a thickened gravy rather than a jus. It is happiest being poured over a roast dinner or, since you can only take the girl out of Belfast, served over a portion of rice and chips for a home-made version of our post-pub meal of a gravy half-and-half.

SERVES 2–4

400ml meat juices

90ml vermouth or Marsala

½ teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

1 tablespoon cornflour

1 tablespoon cold water

splash of gravy browning (optional)

dash of malt vinegar

salt and pepper

Pour the meat juices into a saucepan and reduce them over a high heat by a quarter so that you have about 300ml remaining. Add the vermouth or Marsala and the Worcestershire sauce.

Mix the cornflour with the cold water and then add this mixture to the meat juices and stir as it thickens into a gravy. Taste and check for seasoning. Add salt and pepper to taste and the gravy browning, if using.

Add the merest dash of malt vinegar to lift it all and serve.

My adopted home of Brixton, in South London, has strong influences from both the Caribbean and Portugal as shown by my next-door neighbours who are Jamaican and Portuguese. This cultural melting pot means that spicy peri peri chicken is a way of life round here. I’ve combined it with the butter-basted beauty of the Buffalo wing so popular in America and created Brixton chicken wings. Serve with the Mushy Peas
here
or some corn on the cob.

ALLOW 4 CHICKEN WINGS PER PERSON WITH SIDES

16 chicken wings

1 tablespoon smoked paprika

1 teaspoon brown sugar

1 teaspoon hot sauce

¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)

1 fresh red chilli

100g butter

1 Scotch bonnet pepper

salt and pepper

Try and get nice plump chicken wings for this dish if you can. Snip the very boniest tips off them with poultry shears or a very sharp knife so they are easier to eat. Seal the chicken wings in a hot pan on the hob for 2–3 minutes each side to brown them. This makes them tastier and they look much more alluring too. You’ll need to brown the wings only a few at a time or they will steam and the skin will remain stubbornly pale. Set each batch aside to cool down.

Mix the smoked paprika, sugar, hot sauce, cayenne pepper, red chilli and the butter together to make a deep-red paste. Omit the cayenne if you like your chilli a little milder. I like to use a Caribbean-style hot sauce or something like Tabasco, but you could also use sweet chilli sauce if little mouths are eating the wings.

Using gloved hands, rub this chilli paprika butter into the wings and layer them into the slow cooker, skin side up. You can do this several layers deep if you are cooking for lots of people. Season well with salt and pepper.

Pour about 100ml of water into the slow-cooker crock to help steam the wings to make them very tender as they cook. Put the whole Scotch bonnet chilli into the crock to infuse the chicken with its lovely fruity flavour without adding its fierce heat.

Put the lid on the slow cooker and cook the wings on high for 4 hours or low for 6 hours. Serve with the buttery juices drizzled over them and a little extra hot sauce if liked. Eat with your hands and a whole roll of kitchen roll close by.

Mole (pronounced ‘
mol-ay
’) is a slow-cooked Mexican sauce thickened with nuts and flavoured with dark chocolate and dried fruit. It has a real depth from the bitter chocolate, hints of chilli and the sweetness of the fruit. My dad, who spent some time visiting Mexico, introduced me to the dish. I haven’t used as many kinds of chillies as he did because they are hard to get here, but if you’ve ever wondered if the whole chocolate and chilli thing works, try this dish and be completely converted. It is worth the long ingredient list.

SERVES 2–4 WITH LEFTOVERS

2 onions, finely diced

4 cloves of garlic, finely diced

50g prunes or raisins (I used the Stewed Earl Grey Prunes
here
)

50g unsweetened cocoa powder or dark chocolate, grated

1 tablespoon smoked paprika

2 teaspoons ground cumin

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground cloves

1 teaspoon coriander seeds

3 dried red chillies

6 chicken thighs or drumsticks

2 tablespoons breadcrumbs

1 × 400g tin chopped tomatoes

400ml water

2 tablespoons peanut butter

1 star anise

chopped fresh coriander, to serve (optional)

salt and pepper

This is another very easy recipe. Put the onion, garlic, prunes, cocoa powder or grated chocolate, paprika, cumin, cinnamon, cloves, coriander seeds and the dried chillies into the bowl of a hand blender or use a mortar and pestle to blend to a paste.

Remove the skin from the chicken and if you are using thighs, cut a couple of slashes in them to allow the marinade to infuse even better. Coat the chicken in the paste you have just made and marinate overnight in the fridge.

When you are ready to cook, place the chicken in the slow-cooker crock and scatter the breadcrumbs over it. Pour the chopped tomatoes and water over the meat and dollop the peanut butter into it. You won’t taste the peanut flavour when you cook the mole, but using peanut butter thickens the sauce. Drop in the star anise.

Cover with the lid and cook for 7–8 hours on low. The sauce will combine and thicken, with all the flavours combining to create something incredibly dark, rich and deep. Serve with rice and a sprinkling of fresh coriander, if you have it.

The idea for this gorgeous chicken dish came from my mum and in the absence of being able to nip round easily and demand she makes it for me, I’ve adopted it and practised making it many times. It has become a huge favourite of mine.

The Green Figs in Syrup from
here
keep this dish moist and flavoursome. If you don’t have any, use 3 tablespoons of the Fig and Pomegranate Relish from
here
or the same amount of dried figs and 100ml more water.

SERVES 4

50g chorizo, finely chopped

4–6 chicken thighs, skin on and bone in

2 tablespoons pomegranate molasses

1 teaspoon paprika

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon nutmeg or ground mace

¼ teaspoon ground allspice

1 cardamom pod, seeds crushed

1 medium onion, sliced

2 cloves of garlic, sliced

2–3 Green Figs in Syrup, halved (see
here
)

175ml water

This is one of the few dishes where I precook anything before putting it in the slow cooker, but the extra step is so worth it for the flavour.

Warm the chorizo gently in a pan over a medium heat. When the beautiful red oil starts to come out into the pan, add the chicken, skin side down, and brown it for about 2 minutes in the oil. Once the skin is golden, take it out of the pan and put into the slow-cooker crock.

Drizzle the pomegranate molasses over the browned chicken and then scatter all the spices over the chicken, tossing it gently to coat it all. Add in the onion, garlic and the halved figs and pour in the water.

Cook on low for 7–8 hours. The chicken will become incredibly moist and tender and the figs, chorizo and spices add huge amounts of sweet-and-sour flavours. I serve this with bulgur wheat or couscous with the intense sauce over it all.

This recipe is inspired by the garlic chicken recipe in Nigella Lawson’s
How to Eat
. I have a soft spot for it because it was the first thing I ever cooked for a dinner party and because it introduced me to the amazing effect long cooking can have on garlic, turning it from a brisk shout to a breathy whisper of flavour. Don’t be put off by the amount of garlic in this recipe, it mellows beautifully. It must be fresh garlic rather than purée to achieve this smooth effect.

SERVES 2–4

12 cloves of garlic, peeled

4–6 chicken thighs, on the bone

4 tablespoons tahini

2 tablespoons water

3 tablespoons cider vinegar or lemon juice

salt and pepper

Pop the peeled garlic into a pan of boiling water and boil for about 10–15 minutes, until they are very soft and starting to shed their skins.

While the garlic is cooking, remove the skin from the chicken and slash the flesh of each one twice to allow the marinade to infuse better. Season with salt and pepper.

Once the garlic is softened and popping out of its skin, drain it and squeeze each clove from the now fragile papery skin into the bowl of a hand blender, or use a pestle and mortar. Add the tahini. If you can only get the thicker, stiff tahini from the health food section of the supermarket, thin it with the water until it is liquid enough to drop from a spoon. Add the vinegar or lemon juice and then blend until the marinade is smooth and combined.

Pour the marinade over the chicken thighs, tossing them in it so they are well coated. Cover the chicken and marinate overnight in the fridge or for up to 24 hours.

When you are ready to cook, place the chicken in the slow-cooker crock and pour the remaining marinade over the chicken, spreading it out evenly so none of the meat is exposed. Cook on low for 6–7 hours.