Slow Cooker Mississippi Chicken

This is a super easy, super quick to assemble recipe that uses a couple of packets.  It's not even remotely fancy, and decidedly unbeautiful, but tastes pretty good.  Herby from the ranch, savory from the gravy mix, and with a tiny bit of heat and tang from the peperoncinis.  I found it on the Recipes that Crock blog and had to make it because I was so curious about what the odd ingredients would taste like together!  It's kind of funny that I managed to make a couple of changes to a 5 ingredient recipe, but I did.  Namely, I used chicken breasts instead of chicken thighs and thickened the sauce.  Also, we didn't shred the chicken for chicken sandwiches, but my husband and I agreed it would be really good that way.

 

Mississippi Chicken

 

3 lbs chicken breasts

1 packet ranch dressing mix

1 packet brown gravy mix

6 peperoncinis (I used the approximate equivalent of sliced)

1/2 stick butter, cut into pats

 

Grease slow cooker and evenly arrange chicken breasts inside.  Sprinkle with ranch and gravy packets, top with peperoncinis, and arrange butter pats over top.  Cover and cook until chicken is cooked through (low maybe 6 hours, high maybe 4, this will depend entirely on your slow cooker), then break the chicken into serving pieces and stir thoroughly so sauce evenly coats everything.  You can either serve as is, or thicken the sauce.

 

To thicken the sauce, remove the chicken and place in a bowl.  Pour sauce through a strainer into a sauce pan, and heat over medium-high.  While it heats, stir together 1 Tbsp water and 1/2 Tbsp cornstarch.  When sauce is boiling, pour cornstarch mixture into the pan in a thin stream while stirring.  Continue to cook for a minute or two.  Remove from heat, pour back into slow cooker, add chicken, and stir to coat.

 

If you want to make this into shredded chicken for chicken sandwiches, just pull out the cooked chicken (don't add cornstarch), shred it, return it to the slow cooker, stir, and turn to high.  Leave the lid off so excess liquid can cook off.  Cook on high for an hour, stirring every 15 minutes so it doesn't burn.  Serve on buns.

  

Yield: 8 servings