Sunday, August 4, 2013

Crockpot Parmesan Garlic Chicken With Orzo

A student I used to work with exposed me to the "How Sweet It Is" blog and I have been going semi-crazy with trying recipes.  This past week I pulled out the crockpot--which is kind of counter-intuitive for summer--but wanted to try and easy chicken dish that would also yield good leftovers.  Oh, and I wanted it to also be semi-healthy after living off of leftover pizza and cupcakes from Bjorn's birthday party last week.

Enter: Crockpot Parmesan Garlic Chicken With Orzo.

Best part about this recipe is that it requires you open a "dry white wine" with which to marinade the chicken and also to place in the crockpot.  This, of course, does not make use of the whole bottle--so I got a "nice" (ie, above 9 dollars) bottle and had one of my first glasses of wine post-Elsa after putting together all the ingredients.

The verdict:  I thought this recipe was ridiculously easy, made the house smell delicious (if you like the smell of garlic, and if you don't--we need to have a talking to), and was pretty good to eat, too.

Some tips:

  • Make sure to get and or grate the "finely grated parmesan"--it is pretty essential for the marinade not to have the shredded type.  
  • I mixed the orzo with brocoli like the pictures told me to do even though they said "vegetable of choice".  Brocoli is so easy and also went well with this combo, I thought. 
  • I think you can add more orzo and less chicken if you're into that kind of thing.  We are and used a little more than a cup of orzo and only used three chicken breasts instead of four.