Slow-Cooker Chicken with Sausage and Corn

Here's another recipe from The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook: Revised Edition, but I think it needs some tweaking. The recipe is for chicken breasts or thighs, cooked with kielbasa, corn, and red peppers in a crock pot. Both my husband and I really enjoyed the flavor, and thought it was a great way to spice up a chicken dish.

There were, however, some things that were just a bit off. Mostly, it had to do with how to serve it. The recipe calls for chicken with the bones and skin (allegedly to keep the moisture in the chicken), and some of the tough bits fall off the bone in the crock pot. This makes it difficult to eat the dish as stew. If you just serve the chicken, and then spoon the vegetables and sausage over it, you lose a lot of the vegetables in the broth and they go to waste. I think next time I might just try it with boneless/skinless chicken, and make sure that it stays submerged in the broth in the crock pot.

Two other things that weren't ideal--first, the broth gets a little oily (because of the sausage and chicken thighs, of course), so if you want to eat it as stew, you might want to work on cutting down on the fat, possibly by using chicken breasts and low-fat sausage. Also, it does take an hour of prep time before everything goes in the crock pot. So if you're expecting a dish where you just throw everything in a pot and you're done, this isn't it. The results are delicious though, so it's an hour well spent.

Oh, yeah. The original recipe calls especially for fresh corn, NOT frozen. Finding fresh corn at a reasonable price in the middle of January is not worth my time (if it's even possible), so I used frozen (*gasp*) and it turned out fine. So there.

If you want to try it out, the recipe is on p. 435 of the cookbook, otherwise, here is a slightly condensed version:

Slow-Cooker Chicken with Sausage and Corn

6 bone-in, skin-on split chicken breasts, or 12 bone-in, skin on chicken thighs, trimmed
salt and pepper
2 T. vegetable oil
2 onions, chopped
6 garlic cloves, minced
2 c. chicken broth
1 lb. kielbasa, sliced into 1 inch chunks
1 tsp. thyme
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 c. frozen corn
1/4 c. flour
1.5 c. jarred roasted red peppers, cut into 1 inch strips
1/4 c. minced fresh parsley

1. Season the chicken with salt and pepper, then brown both sides in a skillet with the oil for about 10 minutes. If using thighs, remove the skin, then place chicken in the slow cooker.

2. Discard most of the oil in the skillet, except for 2 tsp. Add the onions and 1/4 tsp. salt and cook 5 minutes, until soft. Stir in the garlic and cook for 15 seconds. Stir in 1 1/2 c. of the broth, scraping up any browned bits. Bring to a simmer, then pour into the slow cooker.

3. Add the kielbasa, thyme, and cayenne to the slow cooker. Cover and cook on low for 3 hours. After 3 hours, nestle the corn into the slow cooker around the edges, then replace the cover and continue to cook until the chicken is tender, about 1 hour.

4. Transfer the chicken to a large serving dish and tent loosely with foil. Set the slow cooker to high. Whisk the flour with the remaining broth until smooth, then stir into the slow cooker. Add the peppers, cover, and continue to cook 15-30 minutes longer until the sauce is thickened. Stir in the parsley and season with salt and pepper. Spoon the vegetables and some of the sauce over the chicken and serve, passing the remaining sauce separately.