Pinterest Challenge: Buffalo Chicken in a crock pot

Over the course of our wedding, engagement shower, and wedding shower (in three different states), we wound up with 7 crock pots. Despite what many people who came to our wedding shower thought, I am not a big fan of cooking in a crock pot. It's very rare to find something I want to make in a crock pot, and rarer for me to actually try it in the crock pot. If I'm home, I'm rarely thinking 6 hours ahead of dinner. If I'm going to be gone, I don't trust our power company enough to go off and leave things running unsupervised.

After exchanging most of those pots for credit towards coffee makers, new pillows, and cash for our entertainment center, our single crock pot spends a lot of time in the original packaging, on top of our pantry, mostly collecting dust.

I can count the number of times we've used it so far on one hand.

But, when I stumbled across the recipe (at Tammilee Tips) via Pinterest, not only did I pin it - but I bought the ingredients and pulled the crock pot out of the box. And washed it, just to be safe.

Saturday afternoon and evening is social night at our house, so I often cook dinner - and the guys are often my guinea pigs for some new recipe. This weekend I knew we were going out for lunch but returning well before the chicken would be done - so just before we headed out, I turned on the crock pot.

By the time we were ready to break after our first movie of the night, the chicken was done and oh so easy to shred.

We all wound up adding both Ranch dressing and a little more buffalo sauce to our sandwiches, so I guess the chicken was a little dry. I had thought the sauce in the crock pot might get a little more bbq sauce thickness and really cling to the chicken, but it was thinner than straight out of the bottle. Maybe that's a side effect of having to use low/high instead of medium (ours doesn't have a medium setting).

Having to add our own additional sauces wasn't a problem, it let me add more spice, and the guys tone it down a bit, so I don't think I'd change that if I do it again.

Why did I say 'if'? This is happening again. Even with the crock pot's involvement.

I used four large chicken breasts and about 12 oz of buffalo sauce, plus at least two more ounces added after the meat was shredded. I didn't do anything to the chicken before I put it in - usually I pull off some of the fat and clean them up a little - and I only found one little spot that needed pulled out after cooking. The first night it fed three people (2-3 sandwiches each), then we managed to get two more meals out of it later. I wish I had enough left to try in a pizza, but I guess that just gives me another reason to make it soon!