Posts from the past!
On this day I attempted to make chicken adobo (a recipe from my husband's childhood - we have had it a couple times previously and once when his mother was visiting and made it for us). Normally, this is a dish cooked for 1 1/2 to 2 hrs in the oven at 350F. It is one whole chicken, cut up; a cup and a half of soy sauce; a half cup of water; and 3/4 cup of vinegar served over rice.
Now, I thought that this would be a recipe that would lend itself well to being in the crockpot - a recipe that needs to cook for a decent length of time, has a goodly amount of liquid and where the meat would taste good the more tender you managed to get it. Unfortunately, due to some quirk of physics, this was not to be the case. The chicken came out strangely dry and stringy after it's time spent in the food sauna and the flavor did not penetrate well. All in all, this experiment was a Failure.
This failure doesn't surprise me at all.
ReplyDeleteThe thing with crockpots is that they start with low-heat and end with high-heat (over 200 degrees!). This is, basically, perfectly designed to destroy meat. The low cooking temperatures break down some of the proteins (gristle, tendons) and the high temperatures break down everything else--except those hearty, stringy muscle fibers. Additionally, I believe the long cooking time allows fat to liberate from the meat into the broth--good for broth, bad for meat!
I have done tests (tests!) working with corned beef, using a crockpot (low-to-high heat over 4 and 8 hours in separate tests), boiling it on the stove (high heat for 2 hours), and my pressure cooker (extra-high heat for 1 hours).
The pressure cooker returns corned beef that, by far, has the most integrity and succulence.
My fellow foodie and corned beef fanatic in Washington acknowledges this, but continues to use the boiling method, as he likes stringy corned beef.
We both have dismissed the crock pot option as producing corned beef which is far too dry to consume.
Just look at what the crockpot does to your pulled pork. Of course, devestated meat is desirable in that case. It is with Mexican shredded chicken, too, which I often use as a filler-meat in enchiladas.
I use my crockpot regularly to make chicken soup. The chicken is always dry and stringy. But that's okay! Because: 1) ease of cooking, while I'm at work. 2) all the fat and gelatin liberated from my chicken thighs enrich the broth, with fantabulous results. 3) I chop the chicken into small bits after its had a chance to cook, which gets around the stringiness problem. 4) Small, knotty little bits of chicken are a nice contrast to the soft vegetables and rice.
Final thought: get a good dutch oven, if you don't already have one--either enameled or raw cast iron (mine is enameled--easier clean up!). The evenness of cooking is unmatchable by any other method I'm aware of, and between the stove and oven, you have total control of the temperature.
I think this week I'll attempt 3-day beans. You spend three days cooking them at temperatures far beyond boiling. The end result is legendary.
And you need a dutch oven to do it.
I actually have had a lot of good results with crockpots in the past. For stew, pot roast and (as you mentioned) pulled pork. I even made one of the McCormick packet dealies in there with chicken and mushrooms and tomatoes and it came out great. I haven't tested the temperature of my crockpot at different stages of cooking, but perhaps I should do this for a more thorough knowledge of the process. All I know is that it does not make stringy meat any of the other times I have tried it with beef, pork or chicken. So I'm not sure why it didn't work this time.
ReplyDelete