Slow Cooker Tuscan Chicken Stew

Tonight is the first entry for this blog. Full disclosure, I'm not a cook. I have a not so unique ability to read, measure, and follow simple directions. However, like everyone else, I also have my own ideas. That makes me feel like I have better ideas than the recipes I try. Sometimes it works out, and other times not so much. This blog is a guy trying to follow some recipes and how they turn out. It's hard to say they are true reviews because sometimes I change things. But if I try the recipes again, I'll likely forget what I've done before and something new will be made.

For tonights review, I decided to cook a Slow Cooker Tuscan Chicken Stew originally found on Pintrest but it looks like it came from Sweetpeasandsaffron.com http://sweetpeasandsaffron.com/2014/09/slow-cooker-tuscan-chicken-stew.html (hopefully that's enough credits). The picture is beautiful, I would have loved to have eaten it. I came up with something a little different looking - kinda like when you go to a restaurant and order based on a picture but what comes to the table is something very different looking.

Yeah, that's mine. A sad comparison. So for the most part I did follow the recipe for a while. Typically, I always put in a little extra vegetables and meat. In this case, the recipe asked for 2 carrots and 2 celery stalks, well that just looked slim. So I added a few more of each. I stayed on the high end for the recommended meat but stayed within the suggestions. The recipe called for 4-6 hours in a slow cooker at it's lowest temperature setting. This is where things started going down hill for me. After 4 hours, the potatoes and carrots were still raw hard. And honestly, it was getting late and my wife and I were getting hungry.

So I broke out my trusty dutch oven, I love my dutch oven. I dumped the whole thing into the dutch oven, covered, and cooked for another 45 minutes. The potatoes were nice and soft but the carrots were still a little touch - which is ok, I really didn't mind.

As for the taste....it's a good, healthy, lightish meal. Maybe other than the fact it calls for chicken thighs, there really isn't anything that bad for you in the stew. The fennel seed taste comes through the most. It does take some more salt to give the potatoes a little edge.

All this being said, the meal fell apart on me since it didn't seem to cook. It felt like it would have needed another 4 hours. So if I was able to leave it in the slow cooker, maybe the tastes would have come together better.

Not sure I'll cook this again. There was a lot of prep work, at least 30 minutes. Cook time was 4 hours in the slow cooker then another 45 minutes in my dutch oven. For the taste, I just don't think it's worth it to me.