Jay's Meal Prep - Slow Cook Creamy Chicken & Linguine

Meal Prepping a Sunday thing.. But who said your meals had to be boring and without flavour ? NO NO NO

Let’s get this straight! Prepping your meal in advance is actually a great way to make something D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S

Let’s start!

Sorry if the measurements are less than traditional, I tend to just add it as I see fit, so doesn’t always have a specific quantity! Just taste it and add what is missing 🙂

It’s SO easy to make and aside from the time it’s cooking, probably takes half an hour to prepare.

Prep time: 30min Cook Time: Around 7-8 hours

Ingredients:

Large tray of chicken breasts – halved
6x chopped carrots
2x cups of sweetcorn
1x large onion – chopped
1x tablespoon of chopped garlic
Bunch of fresh parsley
1x small tin of cream of chicken soup
1x Vegetable stock cube
2x big tablespoons of horseradish mustard
1x sachet of stroganoff powder mix (I could only find beef stroganoff mix but it works well)
A big bag of mushrooms (I put in like 20 as they reduce) – quartered
Half tub low fat soft cream cheese
Salt and pepper
Linguine Pasta (as much as you need for serving)

How to prep

Prepare chicken, removing fat then add to the slow cooker. The first time I cooked it I actually put the chicken breasts in whole. It retained the juiciness and then I just pulled the chicken apart in the last hour but it does take a lot longer to cook. I feel halving them could be the happy medium as yesterday I cubed it but it wasn’t as tender. I also added some chicken thighs in the mix for a bit more flavour, so just substitute out some chicken breasts if you decide to do so.

Quarter the mushrooms, chop onion and chop the carrots and throw them all in the cooker along with the garlic

Chop parsley ready to add to the sauce

In a pan add the stroganoff powder mix and the required 1 cup of water, then stir and heat gently until the powder has mixed with the water. Dissolve the veg stock cube in in a cup with just enough hot water to dissolve it. Then add the chicken soup, soft cheese, veg stock, salt, pepper and horseradish mustard to the pan. If you like mustard add as much as you like though, pretty sure I add a ton but it doesn’t overpower it at all I find. The ingredients will at first look really weird and all separated but with some stirring and low heat it will soon all mix into a pretty thick sauce. Add in half of the parsley and continue to stir

Add the sauce into the slow cooker then stir everything together. The sauce will cover all the chicken and veg nicely but it won’t be soaking in it as the sauce is still very thick. As the juices come out of the chicken and mushrooms though it will dilute the sauce out so no need to add more water.

Cook on High for 4-5 hours or on low for 8 hours, stir every couple of hours if possible. In the final hour add the sweetcorn to the mix and stir (I also added peas last night but up to you what you like really)

Depending on how you added the chicken (whole or halved), use a knife and fork to pull the chicken apart into chunky pieces. The chicken will shred a bit naturally as you do it adding to the sauce and texture but make sure not to completely shred it into the sauce so it’s still chunky with meat. Try it and see if you need to add more salt and pepper, it will probably need more of both.

Cook the pasta when you’re ready to eat, add dish on top with some sprinkled fresh parsley and you’re good to go! YUMMY

DONE

What’s great about this recipe, is that while it’s cooking you can pretty much do whatever you want! 🙂

For the meal prep I can usually do quite a lot with this, just keep in mind that we are using cream stuff so you don’t want it to go bad! Try to eat it over the next 3/4 days max.

I would advise adding some green vegetables to go with it