Saturday, February 9, 2013

Chicken and Sweet Potato Stew

I'm posting another old recipe today, from the Crock Pot Slow Cooker Best-Loved Recipes Cookbook.  On October 4, 2011, I made the Chicken and Sweet Potato Stew recipe. When I think about stew, I always think of my mother's beef stew, but this is an interesting alternative.

It's also really easy to make because you just throw everything together into the crock pot.  The only thing then that takes time is cutting everything into cubes for the stew: boneless, skinless chicken breasts, peeled sweet potatoes, peeled Yukon Gold potatoes, and carrots.

You also add a large can of whole stewed tomatoes (undrained), spices (salt, paprika, celery seeds, pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg), and fat-free, low-sodium chicken broth. I didn't add the salt, as usual. You mix it all together and then cook it, either on low for six to eight hours or on high for three to four hours.

This is what it looks like before turning it on.

And this is what it looks like after cooking.

The recipe suggests that you serve it sprinkled with chopped fresh basil, but I skipped this -- not on purpose actually, I just fotgot.  So I just served the stew with a salad, which made a perfect meal. It actually came out not that unlike the picture in the cookbook, as you can see by comparing it with the picture below. The recipe makes about six servings, which makes it only about 207 calories per serving. With a salad, the meal is only around 350 calories. Thus, you could easily add some bread or something to make it more substantial -- or have seconds.

It's also pretty cheap to make, which is awesome for the grad student budget -- especially for 2011 when my husband and I were both in school. If you had to purchase everything, it would only be about $5.33 per serving.  Of course, I already had some of the spices, so I only spent about $3.85 per serving. And this was really good! As I mentioned at the beginning, this was a yummy alternative to the standard beef stew. I highly recommend it: it's tasty, cheap, and super easy to make.