Pin Test #22: Rosemary Lemon Crock Pot Chicken

image via Food For The Warrior

Writing this post taught me everything I need to know to make this better next time. As you can see in the pin sample photo above by Food For The Warrior this chicken looks delicious. Well when I make it again, I will tweak a few things differently than I did this time so hopefully my chicken looks just as beautiful and delicious.

I would consider my testing effort here pretty much a fail, with absolutely no fault to the original pinner whatsoever. Any fail was on my part. I had four large chicken breasts in the fridge that I desperately needed to get cooked. I decided to try this recipe because it seemed impossible for me to get time to cook this chicken otherwise. I threw them in the slow cooker first thing Sunday morning and within minutes the kitchen smelled delicious. When we came home from church hours later the entire courtyard of our apartment building smelled delicious. I had high hopes.

We're big fans of garlic and lemon in our household and have grown our own rosemary for years on our patio so this seemed like a slam dunk for us. However when we sat down to eat I found the chicken unappetizing and a little bland. Here's where I think I went wrong. Too much liquid in ratio to chicken. I think I probably should've added only about one cup of liquid or less. I used broth.  I didn't get the crispy top layer but rather pale chicken that looked like it had been boiled. It was very moist but the flavor just didn't jump out at me. The Man and The Bug lunched up on the chicken but I was a little "ho-hum" about it. There was a lot of salt and pepper used on the table. At some point The Bug said she didn't like the taste of lemon on the chicken.

I will say that it was so moist that I knew the leftovers would easily shred to make great tacos or something for a second meal. That night I used one of the chicken breasts to make quickie chicken quesadillas for a late dinner. Cheese and salsa brightened up the taste a good bit.

If I made this recipe again I think I would mince the rosemary and some garlic and add lemon zest to the top of the chicken after rubbing olive oil and salt and pepper on the chicken. I would use a very small amount of liquid but enough to make the chicken very moist. This was a pin test fail to me, just because I didn't feel excited about it at the end. But as far as making good chicken I could make a bunch of meals out of, this definitely worked and got the job done. So not a total loss by any means, but I just didn't like the way I did it.