Thursday, February 16, 2006

Chicken, Chicken, Chicken

In the face of doubt and mockery, whilst people told me it couldn’t be done …"You have to add liquid!” they said…and they were wrong…I cooked a chicken in my crock-pot. And it was good. Here’s how to do it to get an absolutely falling off the bone, then the bones all fall apart too chicken:

Crumple up a few pieces of tin foil and put them in the bottom of your crock-pot. This will raise the chicken up so that it doesn’t stew in it’s own juices (heh. I always wanted to use that expression and here it’s not even an expression!). Season your chicken as desired. I just used a little salt and pepper and some paprika (which is a good idea because your chicken won’t brown that much and it’s slightly less disturbing to look in the pot and see a reddish brown chicken then a pale wan looking one). Situate the chicken on top of the foil and do whatever else it is that you might do to a chicken. I tucked some unpeeled garlic cloves around it so we could have some roasted garlic with the potatoes that I planned to serve on the side. I think you could probably tuck a lemon or onion or whatever you like to tuck into chickens (I will not judge) at this point and it won’t effect the cooking time if you have a small enough chicken (ours was 3.5 lbs). Put the crock-pot on high for one hour and then turn it to low for about 8 hours. I put it on in the morning and turned it to warm when I got home. I have to say, it was an excellent chicken. It yielded about a cup or so of “juices” that, if I had actually been thinking about, I could have made into a nice gravy right in the crock pot, but I wasn’t so I tried to thicken them a bit with a little corn starch but couldn’t get them to a boil so it was pretty much an au jus sort of deal once I skimmed off the fat.

Excellent experiment and a meal I will certainly add to the repertoire. Just remember, you don’t HAVE to add liquid to your crock-pot. I checked it out and it’s OK. Clearly some people already know this but at least 3 did not because they told me that I HAD TO ADD LIQUID. They were wrong. Deliciously wrong.

3 comments:

Jodi said...

Wow, I admire your ambition and willingness to experiment!

Nathan Hamill said...

Chickentucker.

ren said...

settle, hammy, settle.