Slow Cooker Amish Garlic Butter Chicken Noodles

This Slow Cooker Amish garlic butter Chicken noodles recipe is the answer to every busy weeknight when you need something comforting on the table with almost no effort. Just five simple ingredients — chicken, butter, garlic, broth, and egg noodles — and the Slow Cooker does all the work. By suppertime you’ve got tender, garlicky chicken and silky buttery noodles that taste like the kind of supper people ask you to make again.

Why You’re Going to Make This on Repeat

• Only 5 ingredients — chicken, butter, garlic, broth, and egg noodles. Nothing you have to hunt for
• Hands-off cooking — start it at noon and don’t think about it again until you’re hungry
• Incredibly tender chicken — after hours in that buttery garlic broth, it practically falls apart on its own
• Noodles that soak up everything — they go in uncooked at the end and absorb all that silky, garlicky liquid
• Genuinely comforting — mild, rich, and the kind of supper that makes the whole house smell good

Ingredient Notes

The chicken: Two pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, diced into pieces about an inch square — or what you estimate to be an inch, anyway. I don’t measure my chicken chunks. Never have.

Butter: Two full sticks, melted. I know. I know. Listen, this recipe is called garlic butter chicken noodles. The butter is not optional, it’s the whole point. I use unsalted because I like to control the salt myself, but if salted is what you’ve got, just go easy on adding any more later.

Garlic: Two tablespoons of the minced kind from the jar, or six to eight actual cloves if you feel like peeling them. I go back and forth. Some days I’m a fresh-garlic person and some days I absolutely am not, and both versions of this dish have turned out fine. Don’t stress it.

Chicken broth: Four cups of low-sodium chicken broth. I buy the cartons. I’ve tried making my own broth exactly once and it took four hours and my kitchen smelled like wet chicken for two days. Never again.

Egg noodles: And twelve ounces of wide egg noodles, uncooked. The wide ones. Not the thin little wispy ones, not the curly pasta, the wide egg noodles. They hold up better in the Slow Cooker and they have that particular chew that feels right with this kind of dish.

Ingredients

• 2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, diced into roughly 1-inch pieces
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted
• 2 tablespoons minced garlic — jarred is fine, fresh is also fine
• 4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
• 12 ounces wide egg noodles, uncooked
• Salt and black pepper to taste

Instructions

Start by putting your diced chicken in the bottom of the Slow Cooker in an even-ish layer. It doesn’t need to be perfect. Nothing in slow cooker cooking needs to be perfect, which is half the reason I love it.

Melt your butter — stovetop in a little saucepan, or microwave, whatever — and stir in the garlic while the butter is still warm so it gets distributed. Then pour that all over the chicken. Try to cover most of it. Some pieces will get more butter than others and that is genuinely okay.

Pour the broth in over everything. Give it a little stir, just enough to tuck the chicken down into the liquid. Put the lid on.

Cook on LOW for 4 to 5 hours (or on HIGH for about 2 1/2 hours). The chicken should be very tender when it’s done — you should be able to push it apart with a spoon without much effort. This is when I taste the broth and decide if it needs salt. Usually it needs a little. I add black pepper here too, a good amount, because I think this dish benefits from it even though it doesn’t ask for much else.

Now — and this part is important — stir in the noodles and push them down so they’re mostly submerged. They won’t all fit at first and that’s fine, they’ll soften and sink. If the broth looks low, splash in a little extra water or another half cup of broth. Put the lid back on, crank it to HIGH, and check back in about 20 minutes. Stir once in the middle. You want the noodles tender but not falling apart — there’s a window, and it’s easier to catch than you’d think as long as you’re not wandering too far off.

Give it a final stir when the noodles are done. Everything should look creamy and thick and glossy. Serve it straight from the crock while it’s still hot.

Note: I usually taste it twice, which means tasting it once when the chicken is done and once after the noodles are in. The noodles absorb a lot of the salt as they cook, so what tastes right in the broth might need a little more once everything is combined. Just something to keep in mind.

Ways to Change It Up

For a creamier version, stir in a can of cream of chicken soup right before the noodles go in. I tried it once and it does make things richer, more velvety. Not very Amish of us, but delicious.

If you want to use chicken thighs instead of breasts, go ahead. Thighs are more forgiving in the slow cooker and some people swear by them. I’ve made it both ways. Breasts are what I usually have so that’s what I usually use, but I don’t think you’d be wrong either way.

You can add a cup of frozen peas or some diced carrots in the last thirty minutes, at the same time as the noodles. It works well here if you want a little more color and heartiness in the bowl.

A teaspoon of dried parsley stirred in at the end is nice. Thyme too, just a little. Neither one turns it into a different dish, they just add a little something quiet in the background.

Leftovers & Storage

The noodles will soak up almost all the remaining liquid overnight in the fridge. That’s just what egg noodles do. When you reheat it, add a splash of broth or even just water, stir it around, and it loosens right back up.

I reheat mine in a saucepan on the stove rather than the microwave because I think it comes out better — more evenly heated, less rubbery — but I also recognize that not everyone wants to wash an extra pan for leftover chicken noodles at noon on a Tuesday.

It keeps about three days in the fridge. I’ve never tried freezing it because there’s never enough left. If you’ve got a big family or you’re making it for a crowd, it scales up easily — just add another cup of broth and a few more ounces of noodles and keep an eye on the liquid.

A Few Last Thoughts

I’ll be honest — the first time I brought this somewhere I felt a little embarrassed about how simple it was. Five ingredients. Twenty minutes of actual effort, if that. And I watched people go back for seconds and thirds and ask me for the recipe, and I thought — well, okay then. Okay.

Some food just does what it’s supposed to do. This is that food.