YUM! Slow Cooker Recipe

I don't know about you, but I'm a big fan of Slow Cookers/Crockpots.  I'd not ever used one until we were living in Michigan and I saw one on sale at Meijer.  I figured for $US25 I really couldn't go far wrong, so I took a chance.  Let me just say, coming home from the barn on a cold winters day, to a meal that's cooked and ready, is pretty darn fabulous.

When we relocated to Germany I packed up the US Slow Cooker and it tagged along, but you have to use it with a big power transformer and it takes up a lot of room in my limited-bench-space kitchen.  I did a bunch of looking around for a German Slow Cooker and found that they're not really used here.  Eventually I managed to source a Morphy Richards branded one, with a German power cord (yay!) from a company in the UK who happily shipped it here for me.  If you need to get your hands on one, please let me know and I'll give you the details of who I bought mine from.

On the weekend I tried Slow Cooker Honey Sesame Chicken, a recipe I found on the Tasty Kitchen website.  If you're ever a bit lost for recipe ideas, just check out Tasty Kitchen, it's interesting, helpful and well laid out - very easy to follow - and they even have a Slow Cooker section!

The Slow Cooker Honey Sesame Chicken was SO YUMMY and very easy, so give it a try, but I had to make a few changes so I'll list them here:-

• The recipe asks for boneless, skinless chicken thighs - we don't have them here.  I did it with Turkey inner breast fillets and they were a tiny bit dry, but still yum.  Chicken thighs would definitely have been better, but let's face it, I'm not going to buy drumsticks, skin them and bone them - I'd end up cutting my fingers off.
• It looks like there's a bunch of ingredients here, and sometimes that puts me off, but the recipe doesn't require any pre-cooking, and all you have to do is pour things from bottles or jars into measuring cups or spoons - it's not brain surgery.
• After adding the cornflour and water mix at the end, I found the sauce didn't thicken up much at all.  I ended up putting on my hot mitts and hauling out the pot and tipping all the sauce into a saucepan.  Then  I whisked in another spoon of cornflour and boiled it for about 5 minutes - it thickened up perfectly.  Easy.
• If you're making it for a family with kids, you might want to leave out the ground chilli flakes.  It's got a wee bit of a kick, and that might be too much for little kids.

Anyway, give it a try and let me know what you think.