Slow Cooker Beer & Brown Sugar Pulled Chicken

My mother wrote to me the other day to say as a result of my brother's most recent visit she had been left with a supply of beer in her fridge. Not a beer drinker herself, she tried to find some other culinary use for it and ended up making beer bread in her new bread machine.  "ummm...it tastes like beer" she complained. I suggested that next time she use it for stew or even for chicken. I'd never actually used it for chicken before, but I had heard stories.

Within a day, I had been sent a link by a friend for a slow cooker chicken recipe that called for 12 ounces of beer, a divine sign that it was time for me to try cooking chicken with beer if ever there was one. I find signs in odd places. I don't use our slow cooker a huge amount, as I do find it tends to make its contents more watery than I'd like, but as we had great success last week with some pulled pork in our slow cooker I thought I'd give it a shot. The recipe was simple enough: but all ingredients in together in slow cooker and cook on low for four hours. Sounded good to me. So in I put some tomato puree:

I did manage to take it out of the measuring cup, by the way.

Then some soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, and worcester sauce. They all looked like the same thing going in, but they are very different, trust me.

Then I put in some paprika. I was too lazy to get out another measuring spoon so I put about a third of a Tablespoon in (in other words, a teaspoon - unless you are in Australia, where those crazies put 4 teaspoons in a Tablespoon).

The recipe called for chilli powder, so I got this bad baby out from our spice tin. Our spice tin is deceptive - on the outside it looks like a huge tin of chocolate biscuits but inside are gems like this. The spices are great, but if I was actually looking for a chocolate biscuit I'd be most heartbreakingly disappointed.

The recipe called for garlic powder, but we don't really do that in these parts, so in went some fresh garlic.

And for sweetness, some brown sugar. Any hard, dried lumps thankfully won't cause any problems here.

A quick stir, and then I had to stop for a while. Why? Because I didn't have any beer. I had done my daily shop at 9am just after the school drop-off, and here in Scotland you can't buy booze until 10am. So ironically they force me to shop later in the day for my tipple, making me more likely to say to myself "gosh, I do fancy a drink now!" and buy more booze. Silly lawmakers.

A few hours later I made my purchase of this from my local off license. In this case I chose it because the bottle was small (I only needed 12 oz) and it seemed to suggest it would be stronger in flavour than the other beers they stocked. I don't think I've ever actually tasted this beer. The recipe suggested that the more booze in the beer, the more tenderizing power it has, but I'm not sure I buy that.

In went most of it. I briefly contemplated trying the rest of it, but didn't think it would be smart to head out on the school run with beer on my breath. Not that they have breathalysers for people riding the bus, but it's not exactly smiled upon.

Last of all, in went the chicken. On went the lid, and the dial was set to "low".

Four ridiculously frustrating hours of childcare later, I opened the lid to this:

And because I am no photographer, that looks disgusting. It smelled nice, I can assure you, and it didn't look as gross in person. I removed the chicken and put it in a separate bowl.

Again, I AM NOT A PHOTOGRAPHER. Using two forks I shredded the chicken like so:

I also added back in some of the juices from the pot until it looked manageably soggy but not too drippy.

Then all we did was slice open some rolls and put in some of this tastiness. We served salad on the side so we didn't feel like complete carnivores, and all five family members ate it. Score. My husband even had some barbeque sauce atop his, and raved through the whole meal.

An easy workday dinner and a great use of the slow cooker. 

If you want to see what this looks like with pretty pictures and to get the original recipe, just go here. 

Or, if you want to make them without going to another website, just do as follows: 

Slow Cooker Beer and Brown Sugar

Pulled Chicken Sliders

Ingredients

¼ cup tomato puree

3 Tbs soy sauce

3 Tbs balsamic vinegar

1 Tbs Worcestershire sauce

1 tsp chipotle chili powder

1 tsp paprika

2 cloves garlic (or a tsp of powder if you have it - the garlic doesn't totally soften in the cooker)

1/3 cup brown sugar, packed

12 ounces beer 

6 boneless skinless chicken thigh fillets

Directions

In your slow cooker bowl, mix together the tomato paste, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, chipotle powder, paprika, garlic and brown sugar.

Add the chicken and beer. Cook on low for 4 hours or until chicken pulls

apart easy with a fork.

Using two forks, shred chicken and add as much or as little of the juices from the pot as you wish.

Serve on rolls with salad.

PS

I now have it on good authority that the leftover juices in the pot when reduced make a wonderful sauce - I will certainly try this next time I make it.

Nanaimo Bars

A few months back, a colleague and fellow canuck announced the happy arrival of twin nephews, both born in the area of Nanaimo. This had given him a hankering for Nanaimo bars, so he asked me if I knew any place here in Edinburgh that sold them. Not wanting to immediately confess I had not heard of them, I quickly googled them and determined that I had not, in fact, ever seen them here...nor did I recall ever tasting them. I am obviously not Canadian enough. My husband has had to correct my pronunciation of these several times and I still don't even know how to say it.

My curiosity was piqued, and they looked simple, so I offered to make some for him and they were well received by him(as were the off-cuts by my family). I even got good quality loose leaf tea in payment, always welcome in my house.

Several months later, he has asked to commission another batch, so I have agreed once more in hopes of restocking my tea shelf.

Of course, this time I didn't manage to do things like measure out ingredients or source everything ahead of time, because I'm stupid like that. Our kitchen is in a bit of a state at the moment due to the recent replacement of our broken boiler, a happy event that unfortunately resulted in the destruction of three kitchen cupboards. You never know just how much stuff you manage to cram into a small space until you have to empty it and find it a new temporary home. Think clown cars at the circus, or perhaps Mary Poppins' bag. Right now the temporary home of all the clutter is the kitchen worktop, and the containers, dishes, and gadgets are precariously balanced and leaning against our hot water tank, threatening to fall into the gap never to be seen again except by the creatures that live in tenement walls.

I had very little space to cook on, so rather than crushing digestive biscuits and then measuring them, and grinding up nuts and then measuring them, I just roughly guessed and threw them into a food processor with some coconut. Oh, shredded coconut of North America (and elsewhere, no doubt) how I miss you. Desiccated coconut is all that can be found here (unless I want to pay £10 a bag or so at Lupe Pintos) and it is a poor imitation of its saturated cousin.

This is what it looked like after a bit of pulsing. The recipe had asked for chopped almonds, but I didn't have any, so hazelnuts were used instead as I still have a massive bag in my cupboard from a care package sent by my mother.

I then turned to melting butter and stuff together. Normally I'd do this in my microwave, but the wiring by the microwave isn't working right now. Our wiring is very important to someone, and they have put us in a queue and will give us a representative as soon as possible to fix it. Of course, I could always just ask again at another time.

Here we had a nice smoothish mixture and two small children magically appeared, asking if what was I making and if they could have some now and if not now when I was done and could they have the spoon please.

Is that chocolate, mummy? Can I help? What's that? Are you adding an egg?

Once the egg was added in, it came off the heat and the other stuff got added.

It then looked like this, and something felt different but I was trying too hard not to shout to be able to stop and figure out what looked wrong and why.

Only did I later realise, after I had put this in the fridge, what I had forgotten. I'll leave you in suspense for now.

At this point, mixing spoons were distributed and there was a brief moment of silence.

On to the next layer! It asked for regular cream and I didn't have any, but I did have sour cream, so I added a mixture of sour cream and milk. If it's good enough for other icing, it's good enough for these, I thought. Enough icing sugar (2 cups) should be able to hide the difference, I figured. The important part, the tasty fatty fats, would still be in it. I also put in Bird's custard powder (invented by a man whose wife was allergic to eggs) and butter.

And I got out the electric beaters to mix it as I felt like I needed some background noise to drown out my muttering.

You are supposed to spread it on in one pristine layer, so naturally mine looked like this. Why is the bottom layer so crumbly? I asked myself. And then I realised I had calculated incorrectly earlier. The recipe had asked for a half cup of butter in the bottom layer and I'd weighed out roughly 60 grams of butter. Unfortunately that is 1/4 cup, not 1/2 a cup, leading the the bottom layer being more crumby that it should be. Crumbs. The only thing to do now was push on.

On to more chocolate. And more butter. You might as well call these butter bars. Again, normally I'd do this bad baby in the nuke-o-matic, but today it was a bowl suspended over a pan of simmering water.

I prefer the microwave as it's easier to abandon it if motherly duty calls, but it just wasn't meant to be.

Mmmm...Butter and chocolate...

I poured it on top, and put it in the fridge to set.

So when I took it out of the fridge it looked like this.

The long greaseproof layer meant it was easy to pull out for slicing.

And while the bottom layer does come apart from the top a bit, and I felt the dry coconut somewhat lacking, my husband assures me these are entirely edible.

Let's hope my colleague agrees.

Nanaimo Bar Recipe

Bottom Layer½ cup unsalted butter
¼ cup sugar
5 tbsp. cocoa
1 egg beaten
1 ¼ cups graham wafer crumbs/digestive biscuit crumbs
½ c. finely chopped hazelnuts
1 cup coconut 

Melt first 3 ingredients in top of double boiler. Add egg and stir to cook and thicken. Remove from heat. Stir in crumbs, coconut, and nuts. Press firmly into a lined 8" x 8" pan.

Second Layer½ cup unsalted butter
2 Tbsp sour cream and 2 Tsp. milk
2 Tbsp. vanilla custard powder
2 cups icing sugar

Cream butter, cream, milk, custard powder, and icing sugar together well. Beat until light. Spread over bottom layer.

Third Layer4 oz dark chocolate
2 Tbsp. unsalted butter

Melt chocolate and butter over low heat. Cool. Once cool, but still liquid, pour over second layer and chill in refrigerator.

Once set, remove from tin and slice into bars. Store in fridge.

Gingerbread Nativity

So I think I'm a convert now to gingerbread.

I used to always use the Joy of Cooking recipe at Christmas for all my cookie cutters, and while it keeps its shape and is ok, it just didn't have the kick of ginger snaps or really much of anything going for it. I voiced this opinion and was told by a super secret person that they had a super secret recipe that I should try before giving up on gingerbread.

That recipe sat in my inbox until this week. To be fair, I got it in January, and I really don't get a hankering for gingerbread until at least Hallowe'en (I have spooky cookie cutters) or usually Christmas season. So I pulled it out, stocked up on molasses and gave it a whirl.

Naturally, it started, as all good recipes do, with lots of butter and sugar.

I wasn't in the mood for hand creaming this, so out came the electric beaters.

I decided this was blended enough for me.

Then in went an egg. It was on the last day of its life according to the box, but I wasn't too concerned.

After another egg was added in the mixture looked a bit curdled, but not so much as to worry me.

In went sticky, sweet, blackstrap molasses. High in iron, doncha know. That's why you can find it in health stores here, but will struggle to find it in supermarkets and most food stores. I also added in "sour" milk. I was supposed to add just a half cup, but I put in a whole cup. At this point I had not realised this. Oh, and some orange zest went in because I've always put it in gingerbread before and it felt strange not to.

Only when it looked like this did I figure it out. Oops. Time to improvise.

I asked myself, what would Robert do. He answered by licking the beaters of sugar and butter. Hmph. And yes, we do have a classy advent candle holder there in the background. It's proper fancy.

So I just decided to put an extra cup of flour extra into the flour, spice and leavening mixture and give it a whirl.

I started to panic a little as it was a very, very sticky dough compared to other rolled cookie doughs I've encountered. But when I looked back at the recipe, it said that even if you actually follow the directions and measure the ingredients correctly it is a fairly sticky dough.

So I said a small prayer and put 3 blobs between sheets of greaseproof paper.

I flattened them down a bit and placed them in the fridge overnight. I hadn't meant for it to be overnight, but life happened.

This morning I took it out and it looked like this. Not a perfect mixture, but if you are just baking for family and friends, who really cares?

A sprinkling of sugar went on before cutting out the cookies. Sparkles!!!

They were admittedly quite difficult to extract from their cutters, but they made it to the cookie sheet looking like this. It's a nativity set I got last year for Christmas - word of my baking hobby has spread.

A mere 8 minutes later I took them out and they had puffed to extreme proportions. I guess Joseph, Mary, and the kings just had too much salt in their diets. Hmmm. Normally I wouldn't mind too much but as the whole point here was they they were supposed to look like shapes that all related to each other I decided to do something extreme.

I cut them AGAIN while they were still warm. I saw them do this on the Great British Bake off and it seemed to work. The good things were I got to have the shapes I wanted as the end result and I got to taste the trimmings. The bad things were that all the cookies lost their lovely crunchy/chewy biting edge and I will now have them instead as a moment on my lips lifetime on my hips.

But I did it anyway. My son helped with the cut-offs.

Because they were amazing. Seriously the best gingerbread cookies I've had. I left the stable as it was, and ended up with this to greet the kids when they came home from school today.

So, without further ado, the super secret recipe...shhhhhhh....

Gingerbread Cookies!
1 Cup white sugar
1 cup butter, softened, of course
2 eggs
1 cup molasses
1/2 cup sour milk (or add 1 tsp lemon juice or vinegar to the milk)
4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cloves
5 cups flour

Blend the butter and sugar, add the eggs one at a time. Then add other liquid ingredients and mix.

Sift together the flour, rising agents & spices and add gradually to the batter.

This is the only cookie dough that I find really needs a stand mixer or a mixer of some sort, because it gets very stiff with all the flour.

Even for being very stiff, it's still quite a sticky dough right after the mixing. Wrap the dough in wax paper or plastic wrap, in sort of flattened discs, usually 2 or 3, and refrigerate it. The flattened discs are in preparation for rolling out the dough after it's chilled. I usually make the dough the night before and let it chill overnight, but I'm sure an hour or two would do it. The dough also keeps very well, if you make it and only roll out part.

Roll out the dough like you would any other cookie dough or pie crust, but fairly thick - about a 1/4 inch. We always sprinkle the dough with regular white sugar, and go at it with your cookie cutters.

Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes. The cookies should puff up quite a bit and should still be a little bendy when you take them out of the oven. It also helps to store them in an airtight container with a piece of bread, so they stay soft.