Love for Food

I've been trying to use my slow cooker more. After all it takes up a lot of precious space. I decided to make this dish because it's such a classic and I can't remember even trying the dish before. It seemed simple enough and was pretty inexpensive to make.

One of the hassles of a slow cooker, is that you have to brown the meat and tenderize the veggies first. It took me a bit of time to prep the chicken and than do the browning in batches. However, the overall time it took was not too bad considering once it was the slow cooker I could forget about it.If you are temped to add more liquid or tomatoes don't. I really wanted to but did not. In the end I had just the right amount of liquid. Slow cooker's don't allow any liquid to evaporate so you do not need as much.

At first I was afraid that I did something wrong when I opened up the cooker and all the meat had fallen off the bones. It seemed like a shredded chicken or a sauce to me. However, when I confided to my Italian roommate of my mishap she laughed at me. She informed me that was the way it was suppose to be.

I had mine with pasta as it seemed like a chicken ragu to me. The pasta adds an extra four WW points though :(. 8 points is still not too bad for a filling pasta dinner, considering a small Lean Cuisine pizza is 10 points +. Enjoy!

Ingredients: Serves Eight
8 chicken thighs or breasts bone in, skin removed (I used half thighs and half breasts)
28oz can crushed tomatoes
1 red pepper, cut into strips
1/2 large onion sliced
1 tsp dried oregano
1 bay leaf
salt and pepper to taste
fresh basil for garnish

Method:

• Season the chicken with salt and pepper. Heat a large skillet over medium high heat and brown the chicken. Add to the slow cooker.
• Cook the onion and pepper for about five minutes, add to slow cooker.
• Add tomatoes, oregano and bay leaf to the slow cooker and cook on high for four hours.
• Serve with pasta or rice and garnish with fresh basil.

*Recipe and nutritional information from Skinnytaste.com.