Topic: Recipes
All my readers know how enamored I am with the slow cooker (aka crockpot) so it might shock you to know that I have never cooked a whole chicken in one before this past week...then I did it twice.
I think I didn't believe that you could put a chicken in the crockpot, whole and without any additional sauces or liquid and have it turn out juicy and moist.
My first experiment was cautious. I spray-oiled my crockpot and smeared barbeque sauce on the chicken, put it on "Low" and actually left the house. The next time I looked at the chicken it was fully cooked at 8 hours and sitting in about 2 inches of natural juices.
My second experiment was going as liquid-free as possible. In my first experiment, I did use barbeque sauce. The second experiment--simply an herbal rub blend. And the chicken was a free range chicken from a friend's farm so I knew there was no added juices hidden under the skin or injected into the flesh.
Here's a picture of the chicken going into the crockpot with just a herb rub.
And here is the chicken 8 hours later, in its natural juices that extruded from the whole chicken.
This chicken was moist and delicious--and the huge bonus I got was this amazing chicken stock--not broth--but true roasted chicken stock. Notice how little is fat in this picture of a container of the juices, after refrigeration.
Finally, after eating the chicken for dinner one day, I easily removed the remaining pieces of chicken from the bones and reserved to cook with some onions, mushrooms, a bit of stock and cream and some pieces of asparagus --then toss into oat bran pasta and top with a little Parmesan-- A chicken in every crockpot indeed!
