Home cooking for the savvy bachelor: Chicken corn curry soup with black beans

The nice thing about a crock pot is that you pretty much can’t go wrong with it.

If you’re like me, you often find yourself with lots of little bits of stuff to get rid of, and the crockpot is great for that.  Clean out your fridge in the morning, have nice fresh dinner waiting for you in the evening.

And so it happened I found myself in just such a position last week.  I wasn’t about to go out and buy groceries; we’ve been stuck in a polar vortex this winter, and it was several degrees below zero, with several inches of fresh snow on the ground.  I decided to work from home, rather than running the gauntlet of commuting in such terrible weather.  I took a break in the morning time and threw together this tasty crockpot soup:

A chicken breast.
Half a carrot, chopped up.
A can of corn.
A big handful of dried black beans.
A banged-up stalk of lemongrass.
Enough chicken stock to cover.

Let it cook a long ass time. (~6-12 hours on high) You’ll know when it’s done because the beans will be soft.

Add a dollop of barbeque sauce.
Add in some curry powder. A healthy amount.
Add some chili powder.
Add about a half can of coconut milk, and let that go a while longer.
After that all tastes delicious, finish with a couple of tablespoons of masa to thicken it up, and let it go another 10 min.

This is also what’s known as the “cleaning out the fridge” style of slow-cooking. If it were kung fu, it’d be Vulture Claw style.