Moroccan Slow Cooker Chicken Stew with Chickpeas

Last week I used my crockpot for the first time in a while, and I feel the need to continue that this week. I love the thing! It makes meals so easy to prepare, and I’ve never managed to mess up anything I’ve made in it. So instead of a beef and pasta dish like last week, I decided to go with a chicken and vegetable dish this week: Moroccan chicken stew. Slow-cooked chicken with tomatoes, chickpeas, onions, olives, and lots of spices. How yummy does that sound?

Moroccan slow cooker chicken thighs with chickpeas, olives and herb couscous that is easy to put together yet full of flavor and spice.

The Ingredients

I know the list of ingredients for this dish is pretty long, but don’t let that intimidate you! A quick look through my refrigerator and pantry and I discovered I had most everything on hand. My shopping list for this recipe was far shorter than I thought it would be. All I had to pick up was the chicken, ginger, and some parsley.

Right before I made my Moroccan chicken stew, the folks at SeasonalitySpices were nice enough to send me a couple of free samples of their spices to use in a post. One of the samples was pimentón, a Spanish smoked paprika. How perfect!

This recipe calls for smoked paprika, so I was very excited to give this new brand a try. This is not the name-brand variety I’ve always used, and the difference in the smell and flavor was incredible. When I compared them, the fake smoke smell and taste of the name-brand paprika was very obvious. I hate to waste anything, but it promptly went into the trash. That’s how big of a difference there was.

The Process

So, guys, this recipe made the most incredible Moroccan chicken stew, but I had some difficulties. It was so good that I hate to ding it in any way, but I have to be honest and let you know the directions caused me some confusion.

First, the times. The total time listed in the recipe is 3 hours 15 minutes, but Step 7 does list the cooking time at 3-4 hours. I chose the shorter time because of the high heat setting. Here’s how everything broke down:

• 16 minutes to prep (most of that was skinning and trimming the chicken)
• 30 minutes to marinate the chicken and finish prep work
• 9 minutes to sear the chicken and deglaze the skillet
• 3 hours in the slow cooker
• 8 minutes to make the couscous
• 4 hours 3 minutes total

The things that confused me about making this stew were the ingredients listed not appearing in the instructions and vice versa.

The Stew

Step 1: Bay leaves aren’t listed as an ingredient for the marinade, but adding them is included in the instruction. However, they are listed in the second grouping of ingredients that go into the slow cooker, and that’s how I used them.

Step 5: Ginger isn’t listed, but it’s part of the ingredients. I added the teaspoon of minced ginger listed with the ingredients. The step also says to add salt that isn’t listed in the ingredients. I skipped it knowing I could add more once the stew was finished cooking.

Also, neither the ingredients nor the instructions say whether to drain the canned tomatoes, so I didn’t.

The Couscous

Step 1 mentions adding onions that are not part of the listed ingredients. I skipped them because I didn’t know how much to add. It also mentions adding salt that isn’t listed. however, the instructions for the brand of couscous I use said to add a 1/2 teaspoon, which I did.