Tram’s birthday was three weeks ago and we had not yet had time to get together and celebrate. Not until this past Saturday, after the twins were down for the night and Steve was at a Diamondbacks game.

She had texted me the night before to see if Saturday would work and if it was OK if we stayed in and had take-out. The staying-in part was perfect but the take-out … not so much.

I decided to make my slow cooker version of Chicken Tinga. Chicken breasts and slow cookers aren’t something that always goes together. We are so accustomed to cooking with boneless skinless chicken breasts that we sometimes forget how wonderful bone-in and skin-on chicken can be. For this recipe, the bones and the skin are a must – don’t worry – they are both removed and discarded before being served.

The bones and the skin keep the white meat from turning to shoe rubber and being dry and tasteless. They are essential for this long and slow cooking process.

The most important part of this recipe is to take extra time and precautions to find any and all bones and bone fragments that may be left on the meat or in the sauce. See those tiny bones and bone bits on the bottom edge of the plate in the photo above? That’s what I’m talking about. Since the chicken cooks a long time, the bones get very brittle and break easily, so follow the recipe on how and when to search them out and discard them. How terrible it would be if someone choked or cracked a tooth!

Also, be sure to drain the canned tomatoes well. Plenty of juices are given off by the meat and the vegetables during the cooking process. The liquid that remains already needs to be reduced, so having all that extra tomato liquid will make the process take twice as long. Plus I’ll be posting a fabulous recipe later this week where you can put the tomato juice to good use, so save it. Or freeze it and add it to your next batch of soup or pitcher of Bloody Marys.

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