Monday, February 9, 2015

Crockpot Roast Chicken




I’ve been craving a good home-cooked, home-style meal.  These gray days just make me want to turn on Netflix, get under a blanket and eat something warm and comforting.  Enter the Crockpot – a little work with a bigger return.  This time, I put an entire chicken in it and wow, it was literally falling off the bone when it was done.  Now this isn’t your beautiful, golden, crispy skinned chicken – this one is all about tenderness and flavor, and it delivers on both.

While a big pile of mashed potatoes would have been amazing with this, I opted for a slightly healthier, lower-carb option – mashed cauliflower.  I cut up an entire head and steamed it.  Admittedly, I did include one Yukon Gold potato, just to help with the texture – I mean come on, try as I might, that cauliflower is not going to turn out like potatoes do.  At any rate, when it was all tender, I followed the same process that you do with potatoes – a little butter, a splash of milk, some salt & pepper, and in this case some garlic powder….quite tasty if I do say so myself!  Tasty enough to fool my stomach (this time at least).  It’s definitely worth a try, if you haven’t already done it.

But back to the chicken.  It’s pretty simple – you cook up some onions, garlic and tomato paste, add a few other flavor components, then pour it all into the Crockpot.  Place the chicken on top and let it go.  The recipe calls for cooking it for 4-6 hours.  I went with 5, and I think I easily could have cut off at least 30 minutes, but it will depend on the size of your chicken as well as your Crockpot.   Get ready to enjoy the amazing aroma that will soon fill your house.

Here’s the recipe:


By the way, this says to skim the fat from the cooking juices, then strain it and serve with the chicken.  I went ahead and cooked it down with a little flour to make it more of a gravy than juice.  I highly recommend that method.

And if what you’re looking for is that crispy-skinned version, look no further than this one – Oh. My. Yum:    The Bitten Word


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