Cooking frozen meals in the crockpot

[SashasMommy]

I normally don't use my crockpot for chicken because I'm away from home for so long during the day that it's over-cooked by the time I get home. But today I ran across a list of meals that you can put together and freeze for the crockpot and since it will take longer for frozen stuff to cook, I thought maybe I could actually make this work. How long do you think you could cook a frozen chicken breast meal before it is overcooked?

I also thought about getting a crockpot with a timer so that it would start cooking later in the morning, but I was afraid to leave raw chicken sitting on the counter for several hours. But if it's frozen, then it should be okay.

[duonyte]

I've never cooked anything other than meatballs frozen in the crockpot, but I did find that the slowcooker manufacturers say it's perfectly safe to cook frozen meats in the crockpot as long as you put in at least 1/2 cup water or other liquid into the crockpot. I don't think it extends the cooking time all that much -maybe one or two hours, especially if you are careful not to use a crockpot that is too large for the size meal.

[HeatherFeather]

I have made frozen chicken breasts in the crockpot and they turn out far less dry than they would from fresh.

Some tips and notes though:

1) there is a point where chicken breasts (boneless) will take on a tuna fish texture in the crockpot - always shoot for the shortest time on boneless breasts, and for my machine, I usually check an hour earlier than that (this is even when using frozen)

2) the frozen breast pieces turn out a lot better than fresh - they don't burn on the edges or dry out as fast

3) the frozen breasts release a lot of water as they cook in the crockpot, especially if you buy the already frozen kind that says they contain a certain percent of solution/broth - all that liquid melts out and should be accounted for in your total liquid for the recipe. Reduce the amount of water or whatever if possible in your recipe

For my crockpot, anything longer than 4 hours on low usually turns the chicken to mush if I am using boneless skinless chicken breasts. I usually consider 3-4 hours for frozen, 2-3 hours for fresh.
This is for 4-6 pieces cooking at a time. Always on low heat.

Unfortunately, boneless breasts don't do as well in the crockpot, but using frozen will buy you a little more time and helps preserve the texture more. I specifically freeze my chicken if I am planning to slow cook it.

[SashasMommy]

Thanks for the tips!