Slow Cooker Coconut Ginger Chicken & Vegetables

Given as a wedding mouth nearly ten geezerhood ago, my slow-cooker hasn't seen nearly sufficiency use. I run to arrive for my redness red Le Creuset Sculptor oven for braising and cooking. Yet, as our lineage is development and appetites are expanding, I can see the useful opinion of having a oversized jar pot and responsibility it work.Works, I could use several aid. I'm no experienced slow-cooker chef, and can class my fails up there with my winning dishes. That is one present why I was elysian to get Kelsey impinging me to act in her week-long Slow-Cooker Contest.

January is the perfect period to spring that slow-cooker a perm position on the calculator top and our object is sure to carbon you with plenitude of breath. Don't own a crock pot yet? Both The Naptime Chef and my friends at Big Girls, Teentsy Kitchen are sharing one off this week! So locomote over and enter.Volaille and vegetables in the slow-cooker is pretty inevitable, I declare, but thanks to a fragrant change commix and a beneficent lsd of aromatics such as seasoning radical and flavourer, this ply sings with kind. It's mellowed out with lavish palm river and served over steamed dramatist; soothe substance at its best.

Ingredients:

4 cloves garlic, peeled
2 inch cube of ginger (about 30 grams), roughly chopped
1 small sweet onion, peeled, quartered
1 Tablespoon olive oil
2 Tablespoons butter
2.5 lbs boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into four
2 cans coconut milk, not shaken
2 Tablespoons cornstarch
1 can of baby corn cobs
1 cup peas or frozen vegetables of your choice

For the spice blend:

1/2 teaspoon ground pepper
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 1/2 teaspoons ground tumeric
1 teaspoon salt

Instructions:

Combine ingredients from the spice blend together and set aside.
In a mini food processor, combine garlic, ginger and onion and pulse until it forms a paste.
In the bottom of a slow-cooker placed on a burner (see IMPORTANT note above), heat olive oil and melt butter. Add pureed aromatics and stir well. Cook for a few minutes, then add spice blend. Cook for 2-3 minutes, stirring constantly.
Move aromatics to one side of the pot and add chicken pieces to the pot. Cook chicken slightly on all sides, using a sturdy wooden spoon to move it around the pot. It should get thoroughly coated with the spice mixture.
Open the cans of coconut milk and remove the cream from the top using a soup spoon. You should have about 1 cup. Pour the coconut milk over the chicken and with both cans, it should just barely cover the chicken.
Drain the corn cobs and chop in half. Add to the slow-cooker.
Place the slow cooker in the base and cook on low for 4 hours.
Whisk cornstarch with coconut cream until smooth and add to the chicken. Stir well. Add frozen peas or other vegetables of your choice. Cook for another half an hour or until you deem the chicken cooked and the vegetables hot.

Notes:

You can certainly use boneless, skinless chicken breasts in place of the thighs, but I prefer the dark meat and find it to have more flavor than the breast. It’s more affordable, too!
In the recipe I call for peas, but you can use any cooked or frozen vegetables you have on hand. In the version photographed above I tossed in a bag of my homemade stir fry packages of vegetables, which worked perfectly with the dish.
My slow cooker bowl can be used on a burner which can then be transferred to its electric base to cook further, but if you have a different type, then simply prepare the first few steps of this recipe in a heavy bottomed pot or skillet and transfer the ingredients to the slow cooker when the liquids are added.
Finally, this dish is not overly spicy as I serve it up to my kids. If you'd like a little more kick, double the ginger and add a 1/2 teaspoon of chili flakes.