January 25, 2019

Wednesday Dinner is Basil Chicken – Review

We found this Asian inspired meal on Pinterest and gave it a go back a bit: this is round two we liked it so much.

It comes from an awesome website called The Food Charlatan. Here’s the link:

Slow Cooker Basil Chicken in Coconut Curry Sauce

I’m sure you guys can imagine how I feel about it – I’m not likely to waste my time (or yours) putting together a whole post about it unless we really liked it. We even included it in our 31 Easy Crockpot Dump Meal post.

We really liked it.

Well, Baby Boy and I did. Bert has been curiously absent both times we have it scheduled for dinner. He seemed to really like Asian food when we got married. Huh.

I’ve said it before, but it should be repeated:

I try, really hard, to make the recipe exactly as outlined by the author. There are a few caveats there though – obviously I’m not making dinner with an ingredient we don’t like. Such is the case here – the recipe calls for bone-in skin-on chicken thighs. Um. Nope. We used boneless, skinless chicken breasts instead.

And I am death on pre-cooking for the crock pot. Drives me batty. This recipe is no exception. Also, boneless, skinless chicken breasts are so low fat that they really don’t do well if you pre-cook.

Except for the chicken, I combined all the listed ingredients up to the cornstarch in the crockpot (affiliate link).

I buy Curry Powder in the Indian section of our grocery store (that’s where I get cumin powder and red pepper flakes too!). It’s usually cheaper than the spice section.

Mix up all the ingredients well and submerge the (uncooked) chicken breasts. You can use whatever type of coconut milk you want. We used regular, but the low fat or no fat would work too.

Then we cooked it for about 3 hours on high. You can do 6 – 8 hours on low if you’d rather.

Check out this color difference:

Add the cornstarch slurry and ginger at the last minute to thicken it up a bit.

I use two forks to shred the meat right in the crockpot (affiliate link) so I don’t dirty another plate. I’m super lazy like that.

Sprinkle with chopped cilantro and serve over rice.

I might have gone overboard with the cilantro.

When trying a new to you recipe:

Read through the entire recipe from beginning to end. Twice.
Check for ingredients that you’ll need or any you’d skip.
Does the time to cook work for you?
Adjust for personal taste, but don’t change the recipe substantially unless you don’t like something.
Note any changes you made, or want to make for the next time.

Obviously you can change the recipe. That’s the gig, really, but getting a good idea of what a recipe is supposed to look and taste like in the end is always a good thing.

Our rating scale is pretty simple – we use a best out of 5 for three different criteria:

Tastiness: this scored a 5 from me; I adore Asian food and I love Curry, so this knocked it out of the ball park.

Ease: this scored a 4 from me; There are a LOT of ingredients, and the chopping took some time. (But it was worth it, so…)

Cost: this scored a 5 from me; See above – there are a lot of ingredients, but they’re all pretty economical.

Overall score is a 14 out 15. Not a shock it made the “Keepers List”. Or that we’ve already had it twice.

This recipe makes a TON of Basil Chicken.

I make myself soup for lunch a lot during the winter by adding veggies to last nights main course. This recipe is awesome bumped up with a little bit of chicken broth, some frozen spinach and thinly chopped zucchini.