Slow Cooker Curry Chicken

Curry chicken, potatoes, carrots slow cooked in a fried curry sauce simmered in a rich homemade chicken broth and coconut milk.

There’s an annual curry event called Colossal Curry Cookoff that’s hosted by Austin Food Blogger Alliance. Contestants bring their best homemade curry dish to the event and let the public taste and vote. There are live music, blogger friends, homemade food, and curry fans. What’s not to love? So I signed up to be a contestant competing with other 19 contestants this past Saturday. Around 200 people showed up for the tasting. It was a blast!

Was my curry good? Hell yeah!

Did I win? No.

But hey! The experience, hanging out with friends, feeding people and supporting the organization that I care about are more important than winning, in my opinion.

And this is the curry that I brought to attend the event – slow cooker curry chicken with coconut milk and lots of veggies. As I’ve tested and refined the recipe multiple times, I’d like to share the final version with you. Let’s break down the recipe into four steps.

Step #1: Prepare The Chicken

First, which cut is the best for a slow cooker? Based on my experience, bone-in chicken thighs are the choice because it’s more moist and tender than other chicken cuts like breasts. You can easily remove the bones and shred the chicken after slow cooking.

Discarding the skin before adding the chicken into the slow cooker prevents the final sauce to becoming overly greasy.

Once you’ve removed the skin and rinsed your chicken, season with salt and pepper, then coat the chicken thighs with cornstarch. This will help make your chicken extra tender as well as thicken the sauce while cooking.

Step #2 Prepare The Curry Sauce

The next step is to fry some spices with curry powder to form a curry sauce. Start with heating coconut oil over medium heat. Add curry powder, garam masala, and turmeric. Stir until the sauce turns into a thin paste.

Now it’s time to add onions, jalapeño pepper, garlic, ginger, tomato paste and a pinch of salt. Cook until the onions are lightly browned and softened. Pour low-sodium chicken broth into the curry mixture and scrape up any brown bits. I’d recommend you use a homemade chicken broth for the best result. If you don’t have it, a store-bought broth will work too.

After adding soy sauce or coconut aminos (for a gluten-free version), taste and add more salt if desired. Note that the flavor of the curry mixture might be a bit bitter when you taste it. Don’t worry. You want the curry sauce to be a bit strong to allow it to blend in with the chicken and vegetables while cooking.

Step #3 Slow Cooker Curry Chicken

This is my favorite part – dumping all ingredients into a slow cooker, turn it on and walk away.

At this point, place chopped potatoes and carrots in a slow cooker, followed by the prepared chicken, then pour the curry sauce all over the chicken. Cover and cook on low for 4-5 hours. If you are in a rush, cook on high for 2-3 hours. You want to make sure that the chicken is completely cooked through.

Step #4 Final Touch

Once the chicken is cooked through, turn off the slow cooker. Stir in chopped fresh tomatoes, sweet peas, coconut milk and cilantro into the slow cooker, cover and let it sit for 5 minutes or so until the tomatoes and peas are heated through. Taste again and add more salt if desired.  Serve over long-grain rice.

Here you have it – slow cooker curry chicken. This is a big batch of curry that feeds up to 8 people. It freezes well so you can save some as a backup meal when you don’t feel like cooking on one of those workdays.

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