Gingery Chicken Breasts

This super-hot weather has thrown a couple of curve balls my way. We had a few weeks of reasonably warm weather so if I had a stove top cooked dinner in the menu plan it wasn’t a big deal. Then… heat wave! I had picked a yummy looking meal on Pinterest that I was excited to cook for dinner but I was not going to stand over a hot stove in this heat. I had to throw together some sort of pantry meal or find a recipe that had most of the same ingredients as my originally planned recipe.

I still had a cookbook that I had checked out from the library so I began to scour the chicken section. I found a few recipes that had similar ingredients but finally settled on one that had ingredients that were on hand. No trips to the store. The best part about the recipe (aside from being yummy) was that it was cooked in the slow cooker. This means I didn’t have to heat up my kitchen.

This recipe is easy to make and well worth the extra minutes needed to sauté the vegetables. I used boneless skinless chicken breasts because that was what I had. That meant I had to shorten the cooking time. I also forgot to add the extra ginger in at the end. Other than that nothing changed. The writers of this cookbook really really really have this cooking thing down. One of the reasons I picked up this cookbook is because I have so much faith in America’s Test Kitchen and I just knew they could help me solve my slow cooker dilemmas. This cookbook is now on my wish list…please take note husband!

Enjoy!

6 (12oz) bone-in, skin on split chicken breast, trimmed

Salt and pepper

2 Tablespoons vegetable oil

1 onion, minced

3 Tablespoons minced or grated fresh ginger

6 garlic cloves, minced

¼ cup flour

1 cup chicken broth

1 Tablespoons soy sauce

1 Tablespoon sugar

2 scallions, sliced thin

Dry chicken with a paper towel and season with salt and pepper. Heat one tablespoon of oil in a 12 inch skillet over medium high heat until just smoking. Add half of the chicken, skin side down, and brown lightly for about five minutes. Transfer to a plate. Repeat with remaining oil and chicken. Let cool slightly and discard skin.

Add onion, two tablespoons ginger and garlic to the fat left in the pan and cook over medium high heat until onion is softened and lightly browned. Stir in flour and cook for one minute. Slowly whisk in broth scraping up any brown bits and smoothing out any lumps. Transfer to the slow cooker.

Stir soy sauce and sugar into the slow cooker. Nestle chicken and accumulated juice in the slow cooker. Cover and cook until chicken is tender, 4-6 hours on low.

Transfer chicken to a serving platter and tent loosely with foil. Let braising liquid set for five minutes then remove fat from the surface using a large spoon. Stir in remaining ginger and season with salt and pepper. Spoon one cup of sauce over the chicken, sprinkle with scallions and serve with remaining sauce.

Adapted from Slow Cooker Revolution by America’s Test Kitchen.