Chicken for the week

Two things I like to do in the kitchen are 1) use the Crock Pot and 2) cook a bunch of chicken breasts on Sunday so I always have some for the week.

I have been experimenting for awhile. I have used different Paul Newman marinades (pretty good and no preservatives or corn syrup). I have made my own marinades usually involving a lot of garlic and balsamic. The problem with marinades when you are making chicken for the week is that I get sick of that particular flavor pretty quickly.

Two weeks ago, I came upon a recipe for roast chicken in the crock pot. All you had to do was put some tufts of aluminum foil on the bottom of the crock pot, lay the chicken in and season with salt and pepper (or whatever other dry spices). Sounded easy but also dangerous. Foil heating up for 6-8 hours? It seems like some chemicals might get released into my chicken that I'd rather not have. The recipe made it sound like the foil was there just to keep the chicken from sticking to the bottom of the crock pot.

So, I improvised and cut up a red onion instead. I added garlic, salt, and pepper. That was last week's chicken. It was good but had a strong onion flavor- kind of like french onion soup. The same problem as I have with the marinades- I got sick of it.

But, so committed am I to chicken for the week that I persisted on... and today I found the right combination.

I present to you, Chicken for the Week:

- 4 chicken breasts, trimmed. About 1 lb. I used boneless.
- 1 baking potato, peeled and sliced to cover the bottom of the crock pot.
- ground pepper
- olive oil
- seasoned salt

Lay the potato slices on the bottom of the crock pot. Rub a bit of olive oil on each chicken breast. Add pepper and seasoned salt (or just sea salt) and any other spices you want to taste.

Put the chicken over the potato.

Turn the Crock Pot on low for however long it takes. I let my chicken go for about 7hours but I think it was done in 5-6. I just forgot about it roasting away in the kitchen for awhile. It's fall-off-the-bone tender (even though the breasts I used are boneless), delicious, and is not dominated by bbq or sesame or garlic or onion. I think it's versatile enough to go over some salad greens, in some tacos with some cumin and salsa added, or just as dinner with some asparagus and brown rice on the side.

I threw the potato slices away because I only really like potatoes from the Capital Grille, but if you are a potato person, I bet they're pretty good smashed up with some butter olive oil, too.