The Great American Slow Cooker Book (64 page)

INGREDIENTS EXPLAINED
Oyster sauce is a thick, brown, pasty Chinese condiment—somewhat sweet, quite salty, and (in the best bottlings) a little musky. Once made from oyster stew that was boiled down to a viscous paste, it is now mostly a combination of sugar, salt, thickeners, and oyster “extract.” Look for it in the international aisle of almost all supermarkets.

Serve It Up!
Serve this dish hot or cold. Traditionally, the meat would be sliced into bits, then served with a mixture of salt, black pepper, and ground
Sichuan peppercorns
as a dip at the table. Or skim the sauce for fat and use the sauce as a dip.

1
Lay the leg quarters on a large rimmed baking sheet. Slip a bay leaf and a halved garlic clove under each leg. Sprinkle the chicken quarters with the salt. Cover and refrigerate for 24 hours.

2
Rinse the salt off the quarters; pat them dry. Put the bay leaves and garlic in the slow cooker; lay the chicken quarters on top.

3
Pour enough olive oil over the quarters so they’re submerged by 1 inch. Cover and cook on low for 8 hours, or until the meat is quite tender.

4
Use large tongs and a spatula to remove the fragile chicken quarters from the fat and transfer them to a large baking dish, roasting pan, or bowl. Discard the garlic and bay leaves. Ladle the fat from the cooker over the legs, submerging them fully. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 days or up to 2 weeks—or store in sealed smaller containers and freeze in the fat for up to 3 months.

TESTERS’ NOTES

•
If you’ve never had confit (
con-FEET
), you’re in for a treat. By slow-poaching the chicken in olive oil, the meat becomes meltingly soft, the height of luxury.

•
For more flavor, add a rosemary or thyme sprig for each quarter.

•
Try to arrange the quarters in one layer in the slow cooker; if not, you’ll need even more olive oil to get them fully submerged.

•
There’s no need to use high-quality extra-virgin olive oil in this dish; a sturdy, flavorful store brand is fine.

•
The legs must be submerged in the fat before they’re stored in the fridge; otherwise, there’s the threat of oxidation and bacterial contamination. Use as deep a dish as you have and be prepared to pour in a little more olive oil in order to submerge the quarters completely.

Serve It Up!
To serve chicken confit, chip one or two of the quarters out of the fat; scrape off almost all the adhering fat. Set them skin side up on a large rimmed baking sheet; bake in a heated 400°F oven until crisp. Serve them whole or shred the meat and serve it with a lentil salad, on a green salad, or as a special first course with crunchy bread slices and a fruit-laced chutney.

1
Mix the brown sugar, soy sauce, sesame seeds, and ginger in the slow cooker until the brown sugar is partially dissolved.

2
Set a large skillet over medium heat for a few minutes and swirl in the sesame oil. Add as many wing parts as will fit without crowding; brown, turning once, about 5 minutes. Transfer to the slow cooker and continue browning more as necessary. At the end, scrape every bit of oil and juice from the skillet into the cooker as well. Toss the wings in the sauce.

3
Cover and cook on low for 4 hours in a small slow cooker, 4½ hours in a medium model, or 5 hours in a large one, or until the meat is tender and cooked through, but not yet falling off the bone.

4
Transfer the wings to a serving platter. Skim any surface fat from the sauce in the cooker, then pour the sauce into a medium saucepan. Stir in the vinegar and pepper; bring to a full boil over high heat, stirring often. Boil until reduced to a thick glaze, between 3 and 6 minutes. Drizzle this glaze over the wings before serving.

TESTERS’ NOTES

•
Chicken wings are a bit of indulgence in the slow cooker—especially since you can’t really skin them. Brown the skin well so it doesn’t turn too gummy as it cooks.

•
Unfortunately, chicken wings require exact timing in the slow cooker: they don’t keep well on warm; the meat turns too soft, almost gelatinous. So remove the wings to a platter as soon as you’re sure they’re cooked through.

•
Don’t shortcut the process in step 4. You want a thick, sticky sauce for the wings.

INGREDIENTS EXPLAINED
Barring some mishap, every chicken has two wings; and each wing has three parts. There’s the pointed wing tip—that is, the
flapper
in butcher talk. It should be discarded for all these recipes. Then there are the other two bits: the
drumlet
(named because it looks like a little drumstick) and the double-boned
winglet
.

To divide the parts of a chicken wing on your own, hold it against a cutting board and pull any two of the three sections apart until the joint is revealed. Insert the tip of a knife into the joint, pretty straight down, then slice through the ligaments and tendons until the joint comes in half. Slice through the skin to separate; repeat with the other joint.

You can often find separate packages of drumlets and winglets at the grocery store. Buy whichever suits your taste—or mix and match for larger batches.

ALL-AMERICAN KNOW-HOW
To know for sure if chicken wings are tender in a slow cooker, insert a large carving or meat fork into the thickest part of the wing. If the fork can be pulled out with resistance—and certainly without the wing coming up with the fork—then the meat is indeed ready to eat.

1
Whisk the tomato paste, orange juice concentrate, honey, vinegar, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, salt, and celery seeds in the slow cooker until the tomato paste dissolves.

2
Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat, then add enough wing parts to fill but not crowd the pan. Brown, turning once, about 5 minutes. Transfer them to the slow cooker and continue browning more until finished. (You can divide the butter into smaller bits for multiple batches.) Toss the wings in the sauce to coat them thoroughly and evenly.

3
Cover and cook on low for 4 hours in a small slow cooker, 4½ hours in a medium model, or 5 hours in a large cooker, or until the meat is tender at the bone.

TESTERS’ NOTES

•
This sweet barbecue sauce calls out for a dark beer! So make a slow cooker of wings before the game or your next party, then break out the bottles.

•
Use orange juice concentrate, not orange drink or squeezed orange juice. The concentrate has more pronounced flavors, the better to stand up to the vinegar and spices.

•
We used a very dark buckwheat honey in testing this recipe, and it offered a slightly bitter, more tannic taste to the glaze.

1
Stir the pomegranate molasses, chili sauce, garlic, coriander seeds, pepper, paprika, and salt in the slow cooker until fairly smooth.

2
Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat, then brown a batch of the chicken wing parts, turning once, about 5 minutes. (Divide the butter among several batches for the larger set of ingredients but use it all.) Transfer the wings to the slow cooker as they’re ready. At the end, scrape any remaining butter in the skillet into the slow cooker and toss everything well.

3
Cover and cook on low for 4 hours in a small slow cooker, 4½ hours in a medium cooker, or 5 hours in a large cooker, or until the meat is quite tender at the bone.

TESTERS’ NOTES

•
Hot and buttery, these spicy, sweet-and-sour wings actually get their zing from the pomegranate molasses and coriander. Teenagers will scarf them down.

•
Don’t use a chili sauce like Heinz; rather, use a thick red pourable hot sauce—
not
a searingly hot sauce like Tabasco, but something thicker. (Of the sauces we recommend, Sriracha, a Thai sauce sometimes called
rooster sauce
, is far hotter than Frank’s.)