French Onion Chicken Stew (Slow Cooker)

In a large skillet, heat up a bit of oil and butter and add a scoop of flour and some salt and pepper to a Ziploc bag.  Toss the chicken thighs, a couple at a time, in the flour mixture, shaking off any excess flour, and add to your hot skillet – I have a large skillet so I was able to do just one batch.  Brown as evenly as you can on all sides of the chicken, liberally sprinkling with more salt and pepper as you go – using tongs is easiest – this will take about 10 minutes.  Reserve the chicken on a plate if you need to cook them in batches.

Add half of the onions to your 6-8 L slow cooker, then sprinkle on the thyme.  Layer in the browned chicken, they should all fit without being stacked, and then top with the remaining onions.  If all of the onions don’t fit, don’t worry, but they really cook down so it’s okay if you begin with onions touching the underside of the lid.  Pour on the broth and sherry, cover and cook for 6 hours on high, or 8 hours on low.  Leave yourself some time  – maybe a half hour? – before serving so that you have time to work in the spinach.  When the 6-8 hours is up, carefully drop in the spinach in handfuls and give it a bit of time to wilt – I found this took some time because the slow cooker is so full, but it all fits.  Your broth/gravy may also seem too thin and broth-like, but once all of the spinach is in, and the chicken breaks up as you stir it, it definitely turns more stew-like.  Season to taste – I added in about 1 tablespoon of Beef – Better than Bouillon at the end to darken it up a bit and enhance the flavor – you decide, it’ll be great either way.