Slow Cooker Experiment #2: Weird Chicken

For my second experiment with Gretel, I decided to check out a recipe I'd seen online for pineapple chicken. However, I didn't have half the ingredients (and they didn't look so good anyway) so I found other recipes online, looked around at what I had in my room, and ended up throwing the following into the slow cooker:

• Chicken (the precooked kind, from the foil-ey packages)
  
• Pineapple (canned)
  
• Mandarin oranges (canned)
  
• Green bell pepper
  
• Celery
  
• Lemon juice
  
• Agave
  
• Spicy mustard
  
• Onion
  
• Black pepper
  

I have no idea what any of these amounts would be; I just completely eyeballed the whole thing. I also poured in a bit of the juice from the canned fruit. (FYI, the picture is from an experiment a few weeks ago, because I couldn't find a picture that matched the recipe...isn't the gel lovely?)

These all hung out in Gretel for about half an hour on high, until it was time for my ~5 hour lab. I had a nice-ish dinner to go to with some classmates and a teacher about an hour after lab, so my plan was to finish the Southern blot as fast as possible then eat and go to dinner.

There was a twenty-minute break in the lab around two hours before the dinner, so I ran over to my room to turn on Gretel. Oops...instead of turning her off before, I'd set her to low! I mean, everything was fine, just very soggy. At least it wasn't the toaster oven or rice cooker. I self-consciously turned off Gretel, then ran over to lab. When I got back (fyi, the Southern blot worked! Yay!), I poured it on some rice and tried it.

Wow, really, REALLY delicious! The flavors blended together WONDERFULLY. I scarfed it down and had a lovely time at the Honors Institute dinner.

Lessons learned:

• Always double-check cooking appliances before leaving the dorm.
  
• Mustard is a simple, delicious way to add flavor, even to a meal that isn't eaten with the hands.
  
• If the plan is to make a dish entitled “________ Chicken” that is not a soup, one package of pre-cooked chicken is not enough to make a decent amount of food.
  
• Do NOT leave a dish like this on for most of the day, since the chicken will be overcooked (though still very eatable).
  

Conclusion: I am DEFINITELY making this again. I will have to figure out how to do the chicken next time (cooked? raw? whole? breasts?). I'll find an actual name for this recipe that isn't something inane like “Pineapple Chicken.”

Also, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SOFI!!!!! I LOOOOOVE YOU!!!!!! HAVE FUN DRIVING AFTER MIDNIGHT!!!!

Slow Cooker Experiment #1: Chicken Soup

As a future scientist and overall lazy, hungry student, my instinct is to have fun playing around with things I know very little about. Here's my first experiment with Gretel (I name my appliances). (FYI, the picture below is of a slow cooker SIMILAR to Gretel; I couldn't find the same one online and I don't have a good camera around.)

At the urging of my mother and a fellow digestively-challenged friend, I got a slow cooker last Monday. So Wednesday afternoon, when I found myself bored and hungry, I decided to continue putting off homework and put my new gadget to use to make chicken soup.

Eschewing any official recipes (I mean, it's chicken soup...simple, right?), I chopped up 2 celery stalks, 4 carrots, two red potatoes, and about 1/3 of an onion. I stuck these ingredients, as well as some minced garlic, a package of cooked chicken, an undefined amount of rice, salt, and extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO), poured in three 8-oz boxes of organic chicken broth, and set Gretel to "High."

After about 2.5 hours, I peeked in. I probably shouldn't have put in the rice so early, since it had disintegrated into tiny flakes. "It's all right," I said to myself. "It's not like I can thicken it with flour anyway--this is actually serendipitous!" I added some spinach for good measure (and because I've had it in my fridge for over a week) and waited.

Two hours later, the vegetables didn't look like they were going to be softening all the way anytime soon. So I turned off Gretel and called it a night.

Thursday morning, I decided that I didn't have time to wait around and see if the carrots and potatoes were going to soften, so I poured about two cups of the now-gunky mixture into my rice cooker, added some water so that it wouldn't congeal, cooked it for about twenty minutes, then poured it into a disposable tupperware (releasing all sorts of toxins, of course) for lunch. I had this and apple sauce for lunch before my five-hour lab.

It was really good. The rice had completely mixed with the broth by now, giving the "soup" a creamy, soothing consistency. Later in the day, I added an egg to the soup while it was simmering in my rice cooker, both to add protein and to get rid of the eggs that might already be going bad in my fridge.

Anyway, I ended up eating this sludge up until Saturday morning, which was probably unhealthy since 1. repeating food for three days is not good 2. I didn't refrigerate it. But whatever, it's healthier than what I usually end up eating.

Lessons learned:

• Add rice closer to the end unless the intent is to make something that is viscous enough to act as mortar.
  
• Don't make enough "soup" to feed the cast of Lost.
  
• Experimenting with food is fun, messy, and delicious (but I already knew this).
  

Conclusion: Gretel is pretty awesome, and I intend to use her pretty often, though I might think about following a real recipe next time.

Snaps for experimentation!