Chicken Cacciatore (Recipe Included)

This week's main crock pot meal was Chicken Cacciatore from page 29 of one of my very favorite cookbooks: FIX-IT and FORGET-IT LIGHTLY : Healthy, Low-Fat Recipes for Your Slow Cooker Honestly, I don't think I've ever eaten cacciatore, but the ingredients sounded good enough so I gave it a whirl. Who could go wrong with chicken, mushrooms, and tomatoes! (No, I'm not leading up to a disaster story. It was actually very good!)

Here's how it all went down...

First, the recipe from the cookbook.

2lb uncooked, boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cubed

1/2 lb fresh mushrooms

1 bell pepper, chopped

1 medium-sized onion, chopped

12-oz can low-sodium chopped tomatoes

6-oz can low-sodium tomato paste

12-oz can low-sodium tomato sauce

1/2 tsp dried oregano

1/2 tsp dried basil

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

1. Combine all ingredients in slow cooker.
2. Cover. Cook on low 8 hours.
3. Serve over rice or whole wheat, or semolina, pasta.

So, here are my ingredients:

A couple things to note: I can never find a 12-oz can of tomatoes...I think all the cans are 14 oz. But that doesn't bother me because I really like tomatoes. I also think that buying 1/2 lb of cut up mushrooms actually yields a lot more mushrooms that the package of whole mushrooms, because it seemed like I ton. I personally love mushrooms, but since my husband doesn't, and I knew he'd be picking them out, I only used about 2/3 of the package. And finally, I use chicken breast tenders. I always have a bag of these in the freezer, so I measured out 2 lbs the night before and put them in the ziploc back in the fridge overnight. They weren't totally thawed out by morning, but good enough to work with and be able to cut up.


I mixed all three cans of tomato product first (can someone help me understand the benefits of the three types? The tomato paste just seems so small in comparison to the rest, but I'm sure there is some benefit to this.) Then I added all the seasonings and mixed those in. Next came the onions and bellpeppers - mostly because I wanted to cut those up before messing everything up with the raw chicken. I have a thing about raw chicken - I use 409 extensively after cutting it up no matter how careful I am.




Anyway, the chicken went in last, and definitely filled the 4qt bowl. (The recipe recommends 3 qt, but I seriously doubt all of this would have fit in a 3qt bowl. My 4qt bowl was filled pretty near the top.)

I am so proud to say that I did not lift the lid or stir it at all - until 7.5 hours later and that's because it looked like it was done. Sure enough it was. In fact, the chicken was a little dryer than I thought it would be, which was surprising considering it was in all that sauce. So, maybe it overcooked a bit? And this is the first crock pot meal so far that I couldn't really smell after the first couple hours. It was probably 4-5 hours before the smells started taking over the house. But it did eventually smell really good.

A little bit of browning around the edges but not as bad as some previous recipes. This helped me fight off the desire to lift the lid and stir it. :-) 

We served it over rice as suggested. Honestly, I don't think I would have thought to serve something tomato based over rice - it just feels like a noodles thing. But since the recipe called for it, I gave it a try.

It turned out really good. I was worried about the bell pepper taste overwhelming the dish, but it was very mild and they were so tender from all that cooking that they were easy to eat. (I would usually pick them out.) Like I mentioned earlier, the chicken was a little dry, which I can't totally figure out, but still very good. The hubby definitely agreed that this would be better served over pasta, and we will do that when we eat the leftovers. But I'm a huge fan of rice, so I wasn't offended in any way to have rice with this. :-) 

I also think this will freeze well for leftovers. So, we'll probably do one more meal's worth and freeze the rest for some other time. Oh, one final thought - since we're cooking more with "real" food (less processed food) you actually taste the food and there is a lot less salt. This is obviously good for us, but taking a little getting used to. I don't want to say that the food is "bland", but I think we are so used to over-salted foods so there is a little bit of wishing there was something more. Honestly, I think we are really learning to appreciate the true taste of food. Another cool thing about crock pot cooking.