Slow Cooker Mediterranean Chicken Is a Dream Dinner
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The best thing a house can smell like is food. Firewood is charming and bergamot-scented candles are wonderfully posh, but the best thing to smell when entering a house or apartment is something delicious. When I open the door and smell cinnamon buns or chocolate chip cookies or saffron risotto, I’m automatically in a good mood. Scented candles do an OK job at that, but the best way to make your house smell good is too cook something delicious, like this slow cooker Mediterranean chicken.
The author says cooking this dish will make your home “smell like a little slice of Southern Europe,” and that’s definitely a good thing. In this dish, the chicken is cooked in a rich, flavorful sauce of onions, garlic, Italian seasoning, and lemon juice. Roasted red peppers make it nice and rich, while kalamata olives and capers give it a wonderfully salty, briny flavor. Cooking the chicken in that sauce for a long time at a low temperature makes sure the meat stays tender and juicy, while all the other flavors have time to mix together. And it’s an easy, hands-off recipe that does not require much effort at all, thanks to the fact that it’s prepared entirely in a slow cooker.
This recipe is designed to take full advantage of your Crock-Pot, which means that even though it has an overall cook time of about four hours, the actual active cooking time is just five minutes. All you have to do is throw some chicken breasts or thighs in the pot with the rest of the ingredients, then let them simmer for a few hours so all the flavors can mix and meld into something really beautiful, while you’re free to go watch This Is Us.
You can make this recipe with boneless, skinless chicken breasts, or with chicken thighs. Personally I tend to prefer chicken thighs in most dishes, but cooking chicken breasts in a slow cooker helps keep them nice and tender, without getting drying out. Serve it over couscous or orzo to absorb some of the extra sauce, and you’ll have something really fragrant and special.
Get the Recipe: Slow Cooker Mediterranean Chicken from Creme de la Crumb