Crock Pot Chicken & Gravy (2024)

An easy slow cooker recipe for tender chicken breasts and savory gravy perfect served over mashed potatoes, noodles or rice.

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I am so completely IN LOVE with this recipe! It’s taken me several attempts to get it juuuuust right but now that I have, we eat this all the time! Husband even asked for it again last weekend, which is saying a lot since he doesn’t usually get too excited about food.

Here’s where you’re wondering why the universe would pair up a die-hard foodie who loves to cook like me with a man who really doesn’t care much about eating! Our friends ask the same question all the time!

Husband and the girls like this over mashed potatoes but you know me and ol’ Brutus always like rice the best. I usually make both so everyone is happy. I usually make both because the majority rules in favor of the mashed potatoes but I’m the cook so I can make rice too if I want to!

HOW THIS RECIPE IS DIFFERENT THAN THE OTHERS

The first time I made this I used one of the many recipes floating around online for something similar and, though it tasted pretty good, the gravy was very watery and had to be thickened (which wasn’t mentioned in the recipe… grrrr).

The most common recipes I see online call for the same ingredients: cream of chicken soup, water and chicken gravy mix. After all my testing, my final recipe includes:

1. Cream of Chicken Soup
2. Chicken Broth instead of water
3. Brown Gravy Mix instead of chicken gravy mix.
4. Seasonings (simple stuff, nothing crazy)
5. Flour

WHY I MADE THE CHANGES

I know we’re not cooking a gourmet meal here and using a lot of shortcut ingredients but I really, really prefer the brown gravy mix over the chicken flavor in this. It makes for a richer color and a more homemade taste.

No matter how many times I made this or how many variations of the recipe I tried, the gravy was never thick. It was more like a sauce. I know it seems like it would be plenty thick with these ingredients but after cooking so long, the gravy really thins out.

I would always end up having to pour the sauce into a pan and thicken it on the stove with a cornstarch slurry. Not that it was hard to do that but the thing that appeals most to me about slow cooker meals is that everything cooks in one pot (ideally).

To remedy this I added flour to the mixture and it worked like a charm! I was worried I would be able to taste the raw flour (which is why we cook it in some sort of fat first when making traditional pan gravy) but nope, that raw taste cooks away in the crock pot!

And I didn’t use cornstarch because the gravy packets already have plenty of cornstarch in them and I didn’t want the dish to have a starchy taste to it.

Do you see how much time I put into thinking about recipes? It’s ridiculous, I know! It’s literally how I put myself to sleep at night. Instead of counting sheep, I say to myself, alright Mandy, let’s cook something and I start writing a recipe in my head and then… zzZzzzZz……

Speaking of sleeping… I need your help with something if you can. I… ummm… well I have started… ugh… snoring 😟 Like really snoring. I wake Husband up all night with my snoring and he wakes me up all night telling me I’m snoring.

He started out just gently nudging me and telling me to roll over on my side but after months and months of this I now wake up to him tugging my hair or pinching my nose shut like he’s trying to suffocate me. I think he might actually be contemplating suffocating me at this point.

Then I get mad and go get on the couch then he gets mad when he wakes up in the morning and I’m not in the bed with him. Something’s got to give, y’all! He’s either going to strangle me in my sleep or we’re going to end up divorced!

He snores too and I’ve put up with it for all these years so I thought I would get even and take a video of him snoring so he could see I’m dealing with the same thing. Then he took a video of me snoring and it was awful! I was 10 times louder than him! I was like one of those snow beasts from that Star Wars movie. It was atrocious! I ain’t even mad! No wonder he took a video and has been trying to kill me in my sleep!

I’ve tried the Breathe Right strips and they help a tiny bit. I’m looking in to having a sleep study done. I’m also considering buying a specialized mattress because I’ve heard that could help. Do any of you have any other suggestions? Have you tired anything that works? What tricks do you have up your sleeves?

So, there you have it… a yummy recipe and waaaaay too much information about what goes on in my bedroom!

NOTES ON COOKING CROCK POT CHICKEN & GRAVY:

• The gravy thickens more as it cools. I have found that I enjoy this the most when I remove the lid and let it cool for about 20 minutes before serving – trust me, it will still be plenty hot!
• Base your cooking time on your crock pot. If you know your crock pot “cooks hot” then you will likely only need to cook the chicken for 3 hours. If yours is super slow to get going, you may have to cook it 4 hours (or more). I have three crock pots that I use the most. One is crazy hot and always overcooks recipes. One is super slow and can’t be used for recipes that cook on high (I use “high” for “low” and don’t even try to cook recipes that cook on the “high” setting). And one is juuussssst right. I’m like Goldilocks.
• You can use chicken gravy if you like but I very much prefer the color and flavor of the brown gravy packs best in this.
• The flour is a thickening agent. If you don’t want to use it, leave it out then use a cornstarch slurry to thicken at the end. I know it seems like you wouldn’t need anything to thicken this but you really, really do.

Recipe for Crock Pot Chicken & Gravy