Freezer to Slow-Cooker: 7 – French Country Chicken with Veggies

This is #7 in our 7 ways – 7 easy days category, one of our 7 “kit” dinners you make up yourself and freeze. Designed as a Slow Cooker dinner cooking up a wonderful ready-to-eat dinner while you do other things when time presses.

 There are a couple of techniques you’ll be using here for all the Freezer to Slow-Cooker meals, so we’re going to cover them once. While they may not seem that important, they really do make a big difference in these recipes.

These techniques are:

1. Pack the freezer bags in the order they are listed in the recipe.
2. Always slit the BOTTOM of the bag to dump into cooker from the bottom so ingredients are layered as they need to be to cook properly.
3. Store kit bags upright in freezer if possible. 

Ingredients

• 2 chicken half breasts, boneless/skinless,each cut in 4 even-sized chunks
• 4 boneless/skinless chicken thighs, each cut in half
• 2 cloves of smashed, minced garlic
• 1 cup cubed cooked ham
• 4 large gold potatoes, scrubbed, each cut into fourths
• 1  Tbsp. Herbs d’ Provence crushed with 1 tsp. kosher salt
• 1  large sweet onion, roughly chopped
• 3  cups whole green beans fresh or frozen may be used(if frozen used, keep frozen while processing)
• ½ cup chopped sweet red peppers
• 1 cup baby carrots
• 1-½ tsp. each sea salt and fresh ground black pepper
  • To be added at time of cooking
• 2 cups chicken broth (low sodium) 
• ½ cup full bodied white wine, not too dry, such as Sauterne.*
• *optional

Process for Kit Prep

1. Toss first 5 ingredients together in a bowl, then add to bag
2. Peel, and chop sweet onion, add to bag on top of rice
3. Place green beans in a layer atop onion, if frozen be sure to keep frozen while packaging.
4. Add chopped red peppers
5. Sprinkle with sisal and black pepper
6. Squeeze out excess air and close bag. Freeze immediately

Process for Cooking

1. Slit bottom of freezer bag and dump ingredients into prepared, preheated slow cooker, bottom-of-the-bag items first,
2. Pour chicken broth & wine (or water) over the food
3. Cover and cook on low for at least 4 hours and use Keep Warm setting after that.

Serves 6 to 8

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