Herbal black chicken soup and Aerogaz slow cooker

I read on the net that cooking Chinese herbs in a metal pot is not advisable because (somehow) the metal causes the herbs to lose their efficacy. So after looking around a bit, I decided to buy the 3litre Aerogaz slow cooker from Giant last Sat to cook the black chicken I had bought.

I also bought the 2 herbs I needed - Yu Zhu (Solomon's Seal) and Huai Shan from Giant since I saw the herbs there. The rest of the other herbs that I used were dang gui, dang shen, wolfberries and red longans. Now, my good ole mama told me that I needed to pour hot water into the crockpot so I boiled water separately and poured that into the pot over the herbs. Then I added the chicken from another pot that I used for blanching it. After that I set the slow cooker on auto-cook and left the house.

When I got home about 5 hours later, the entire kitchen and rooms were filled with an earthy herbal aroma. I found the chicken bubbling away in a delicious herbal concoction. Even after I switched off the electricity to the slow cooker, the pot kept the soup warm for a period of time. Just before we dug into the dish, I set the cooker to fast stew (which didn't seem to do much in 5-10mins) and the meat was by then so tender that it fell off the bones of the black chicken.

I think my CEB rather liked the soup as I did although he doesn't eat black chicken for no better reason that that the color is unappealing. That's alright - more for me! I had half the chicken for dinner while he ate the spinach dish and the tom kar gai with prawns dish which I had cooked for him in the tanyu pot I bought from Groupon. That pot is really easy to clean and seems to keep the food warm a pretty long time.

I tell you, I never thought I would end up so "domesticated" when just 2 years ago, I could not cook anything more than instant noodles. I'm just happy now that I have the time to indulge a little in the homely side of things