Sunday 8 June 2014

The Best Whole Chicken in a Crock Pot

UntitledThe weekend before I cooked the Luscious Italian Chicken recipe was very, very busy. On the Saturday morning, I accompanied Ms Fussy Eater to Dublin to see 1 Direction live at Croke Park. We left home that morning at about 8:45am, and went on a bus with 45 other mums and young ladies, stopping off at Dundrum shopping centre for a couple of hours, before proceeding on to Croke Park. 1 Direction played to more than 80,000 fans that evening, while it lashed rain. Ms Fussy Eater enjoyed the event immensly, and I have to say that I had a good time too. We got to bed, after a long bus journey home, at 3:30am.

So, I was in no mood to cook the next day. We ate mostly rubbish, leftovers from a family event the previous week. By Monday, we needed some proper, wholesome nourishment. A whole cooked chicken was just perfect.

I've cooked a while chicken in the crock pot before, with good results. The Slow Cooked Chicken with Tarragon was excellent, as was the Fall off the Bone Chicken. Ever adventurous, I decided to try another version and found this recipe for The Best Whole Chicken in a Crock Pot over on 100 days of real food. It's not unlike the Fall off the Bone version, but it was absolutely delicious.

Preparation

The recipe calls to combine the spices in a bowl: 2tsp paprika, 1tsp salt, 1tsp thyme and 1/4tsp cayenne pepper, 1/4 tsp black pepper. It also calls for a few things I don't have, so I used 1tsp onion salt and a crushed clove garlic. I cut up 2 onions, quite small, and put them in the bottom of the pot. The chicken sat on top, and I just poured/rubbed the mixed spices over it. Then I left the chicken cooking on LOW for the whole day while I was at work - about 9 hours.

When I came home, I prepared a big pot of mashed potato.

The Outcome

As before, the chicken just falls apart when we tried to take it out of the pot. There is almost no carving involved. The chicken is tender, suculent, perfectly cooked and full of flavour. But the best part of this dish is the flavoursome and rich stock left behind in the pot. Each person got a mound of mashed potato, tasty chicken and some delicious sauce poured over. There could be nothing more wholesome.

The Verdict

I don't think you can go wrong with mashed spuds and chicken. We all loved it and everybody went back for second helpings.

The chicken was quite large, so we had quite a few leftovers, which went into sandwiches and salads during the week.

Hubby has declared this the best of the three whole chicken recipes.



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