inspired by phillyjaycooking.com smothered turkey crockpot recipe
I couldn't start off the first official blog recipe post without giving a shoutout to one of my favorite dishes- turkey wings. This recipe which is an inspired homage to Philly Jay Cooking is a great and easy way to serve dinner on a whim. I increased a bit of the cooking time and added my own lower sodium version of the dish, but the lack of salt does not take away from the dish at all.
Turkey wings were a staple in the Allen household- often served with grits or over rice and boiled eggs. What should be a Thanksgiving only meal was usually our Sunday dinner if we didn't have pot roast. Since my grandmother is not a big fan of using salt in any of our dishes we learned how to combine herbs and non-salt blends in order to create flavorful compounds for our meats and side entrees. Also, adding soups such as Cream of Chicken (which is used heavily in this dish,) already has it's own natural salts.
Ingredients:
For this recipe, I combined a generous amount of Mrs. Dash onion and herb and traditional blend seasonings as well as two cans of Campbell's Cream of Chicken soup (10 1/2 oz cans), I also used I Can't Believe It's Not Butter in place of traditional margarine to braise my meat, 4 tbsp of flour, one onion and bell pepper and 1 cup of organic turkey broth.
Directions:
The first step includes a lot of chopping! Fortunately, I had my wings cut in 1/2 by the Publix butcher the night before to save some time . On Sunday morning, I seasoned my meat using the Mrs. Dash blends, then, I chopped my onion and bell pepper into fine chunks. Measured one cup of organic turkey broth and added four tbsp of flour as well as my soups to the broth. I created what Philly Jay calls the "slurry" (combination of the flour, organic turkey broth, and cream of chicken soup.) Then, I was ready to braise my turkey wings. If I was home alone in my apartment without picky eaters I would have opted to adding garlic in this process. But for the sake of the oldies but goodies taste buds I just proceeded to add two tbsp of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter to a preheated skillet and placed my meats side by side to lightly sear the turkey before placing it in the crockpot. This allows the meat to keep a shape, but to be honest, my meat still fell off the bone and sometimes that's a better indicator of complete doneness than a meat thermometer.
After you braise each side of your wings for 3-4 minutes, you want to add the pre-seasoned wings to your crockpot. During this time you'll also gently sauté your bell peppers and onions. Once completed, add the vegetables into your crockpot along with your "slurry". Philly Jay suggested cooking this dish on high for over 4 1/2 hours, but I found with the amount of turkey wings (2 lbs. to be exact) I had I need to prolong the process to an additional hour to two hours. After your turkey wings are completed let them cool and turn your crockpot to the warm position. This dish is best to serve after a brief cooling period of 10-15 minutes in order to let the flavors settle.
Recipe and Ingredients:
