Rosemary Chicken with Sweet Potatoes

Sometimes, the best-laid plans just don't work out quite as well as you had hoped. Take today's recipe, for example. The original recipe featured flavorful chicken cooked in the slow cooker on a bed of onions and Yukon Gold potatoes. Sounds delicious, no? I figured I would eat the chicken and the vegetarian and I would split the onions and potatoes.

Fast forward several months, however, and I'm now avoiding white potatoes. But no problem; I can still have sweet potatoes. That won't change things too much; the vegetarian and I love sweet potatoes! So I loaded up the slow cooker and set it to cook for 6 hours.

Then life got in the way and I decided to give everything another two hours. But we still weren't ready to eat (we were rehearsing at home that day) so the slow cooker flipped over into its "warm" mode. Several hours later, I finally dished everything up, along with some Rice Salad with Cucumber and Dill Dressing, and, starving, we sat down to eat.

So how was it? Truth be told, it wasn't very good. The chicken was certainly tender but everything was SO greasy! And the sweet potatoes and onions had melted together (along with the chicken juice, which normally doesn't bother the vegetarian but this time, well, it just wasn't very good) into a sweet and gooey mess. Yuck!

So what did we do? I salvaged what I could. The chicken (drained and stored without its greasy liquid) ended up making many meals for the next week. Reheated (or cut up cold to form salads), it provided a delightful protein addition. And the vegetables? I kept planning to make them into a soup of some sort but, truthfully, I never had the heart to so I eventually threw them out.

Now, you may be wondering why I'm even including this recipe? Well, first of all, the flavors were really very good! I would definitely try this again, but with a few adjustments:

• 6 hours of cooking time on low and no "warming time"
• Defatting the chicken before placing it in the slow cooker
• Leaving the sweet potatoes whole (or, if you eat them, using Yukon Golds)

What else would you do differently? Do you ever have a great recipe idea, only to have it not come out exactly (or at all) as planned? Let us know in the comments!

Rosemary Chicken with Sweet Potatoes
adapted from Recipe.com

• 12 bone-in, skinless chicken thighs
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 pound sweet potatoes, cut in half (2-3 sweet potatoes)
• 1 red onion, cut into thin wedges
• 6 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup pomegranate juice
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons potato starch
• 1 tablespoon rosemary, coarsely chopped
• 1 teaspoon juniper berries
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper, freshly ground

Rinse chicken, defat as best you can, and pat dry. In a large skillet over medium-high heat, heat olive oil. Add chicken (you may need to do this in batches, depending on the size of your skillet) and brown, 1-2 minutes per side.

Place sweet potatoes, onion and garlic in the bottom of your slow cooker. Top with chicken. In a small bowl, whisk together pomegranate juice, lemon juice potato starch, rosemary, juniper berries and black pepper. When well combined, pour over chicken. Cover and cook on low for 6 hours. Enjoy!

Links;

• Rosemary Chicken and Sweet Potatoes from Food.com
• Rosemary Chicken & Sweet Potatoes from Healthy Choice
• Chicken and Sweet Potatoes with Shallots from Real Simple
• Sweet Potato Chicken Rosemary Recipes from Yummly
• Rosemary-Roasted Chicken Legs with Sweet Potatoes from BrokeAss Gourmet

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