Cook It! crockpot edition: Coca-cola Chicken

Sunday, June 20, 2010 Jonette 0 Comments

Yep, you read the title right.

A geeky reason to love this recipe: as we all know, Coca-Cola makes for very potent acid. You can practically use it to clean off rust in the inner workings of your car, scrub stains of your bathroom porcelain, clean burnt pans, remove gum in your hair, even clean ancient coins! With so much acid in the drink, why not put it to good use as a meat tenderizer?

A lazy reason to love this recipe: It's only got four ingredients. 'Nuff said.

The best reason to love this recipe: It's goooooooooooooooooood. Deserves every singe extra O in there, yes it does.

You will need:

- 1 whole chicken, about 3 pounds. This will also work if your chicken is cut up into parts, like mine was.

- 1 cup ketchup

- 1 large onion, thinly sliced

- 1 cup cola, Coke, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, etc.

- Salt and Pepper

Let's Get To It!

Wash and pat your chicken dry. Rub salt and pepper onto the chicken meat to taste.

Be sure to keep your cat away from the chicken.

Slice up your onion. Set aside.

Arrange your chicken in a nice, neat pile inside your crockpot.

Add the sliced onion, the one-cup ketchup...

... and the Cola, in all its fizzy glory.

Take sometime to admire Science at work before putting the glass lid back on.

Set it to Low, and let it cook for 6 to 8 hours.

Peeking every now and then is optional. This is what your chicken looks like after an hour.

After merely three or four hours. Look at all that chicken essence. Yum yum.

When the chicken meat is all tender, turn off the crockpot and let it cool for a bit. Once cool, you may wish to transfer the dish onto a bigger container. again, make sure to keep your chicken away from the cat. Above, the chicken sans sauce...

... and the chicken with sauce.

(As taken from About.com)

This serving I cooked up quickly vanished in two days' time, courtesy of James, me, Irl, Ditas, and a number of colleagues. Talk about potent stuff!

I plan to try this dish with pork instead for next time. It certainly sounds like a very promising idea.

UPDATE: the Coca-Cola Pork needed more time to cook to get it to the same tenderness as the chicken. (Can you say overnight?) I decided to dunk in a chopped-up chicken to to the ensemble and let it cook on Low overnight. James and I had it for brekkie the next day, and, in James' words, it was "a world of difference". I reckon it was the additional time and the chicken oil that did it. Voila!

Hope you liked this recipe! If you've tried this out, or made some variations of your own, I'd love to know how it turned out for you in the comments below.