Advertisement

Slow cooker has kitchen novice doing a slow burn over chicken

The Red Shoe Report

February 28, 2011|By Rachel Parsons

When I said that I had mastered the art of cooking, and that my old nemesis, the dreaded crock pot, was bending to my will, I was just kidding.

Seriously. What I meant to write was that this one time, I managed to cook something in a crock pot for the appropriate amount of time. And then I got cocky. That metaphoric pat on the back that I gave myself did, in fact, come back to haunt me. My dad warned me about the dangers of such self-congratulation, but I didn’t listen.

How is it possible that I can graduate from college with honors, but I cannot assert my authority over an inanimate object? One of life’s great mysteries.

In my attempt to compensate for my over-cooked chicken, I got the bright idea to try using partially-thawed chicken. I had put it in the fridge to thaw, but it didn’t defrost quite fast enough for me, so I figured, hey, just throw it in anyway. In fact, I was congratulating myself on my clever solution to the eternal quandary — how slow is a slow cooker?

Advertisement

I turned the cooker on high and went about my business, thinking that I would have a nice dinner to come home to. Well, that might have been true if I was coming home from a two-week vacation. After a few hours of errands, not so much. Go ahead and admit what you were thinking — who thinks that a slow cooker will cook frozen chicken? Yeah, I am that person, and I don’t care to admit it. It made sense at the time. For what it’s worth, I ended up eating my chicken the next night, and it was delicious.

Now that my crock pot woes have become public information, I’ve received all kinds of advice. In a moment of frustration, I asked a simple question: “Is there some kind of crock pot handbook or something?”

It really bugs me when other people know things that I don’t.

At least five people said that yes, in fact, there is not just one crock pot handbook, but several. A quick Google search yielded approximately 876,000 of them.

But my friend Fred summed it up best: “Do you remember that little white book that came in the box with the word ‘instructions’ on it?”

Touche, my friend.

And now I am officially taking back all those compliments I gave myself. Any success I might have had was a fluke. In my kitchen, the chicken comes rare and well-done, and the evil crock pot can just go ahead and pat itself on the back. OK, Mr. Crock Pot, you can be the winner this time, you and your fickle cooking times and unpredictability, but don’t think I won’t share your true colors with the rest of the world.

Contact Rachel Parsons at rparsons@winchestersun.com.

Central Kentucky News Articles
|
|
|