Sweet potato and chicken stew

From korea penultimate day

I decided to bring out my slow cooker at the weekend and make something tasty. I found this recipe on the crock-pot website that sounded perfect.

http://www.crock-pot.ca/recipe/chicken-and-sweet-potato-stew.aspx

There was a problem though; the cooking time was way off for my cooker. I start it at 10am so it should have been ready 6 to 8 hours later. Unfortunately by 4pm, 6 hours in, the potatoes were nowhere near done. So I put the cooker onto high and hoped for the best. It was until 7pm that the potatoes were even starting to soften, so we ate it at that point.

Since then I've learned that you need to put vegetables that take longer to cook at the bottom of the pot where it is hotter. In the case of this recipe the potatoes should be at the bottom, followed by carrots, then sweet potatoes. Surprisingly the chicken would be at the top. I would have thought that the meat would need more heat.

Regardless, the stew was really tasty; I used a little tube of basil because the store had run out of fresh basil, so hopefully I can fix that next time.

Recipe reproduced here:

Chicken and Sweet Potato Stew

Ingredients:

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces

2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed

2 medium Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cubed

2 medium carrots, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch slices

1 28-oz can whole stewed tomatoes

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

1/8 tsp ground cinnamon

1/8 tsp ground nutmeg

1 tsp paprika

1 tsp celery seed

1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped

1 cup nonfat, low sodium chicken broth

Directions:

Combine all ingredients in the slow cooker. Cover; cook on Low for 6 to 8 hours or on High for 3 to 4 hours.

This recipe is from www.crock-pot.ca.