Work-a-Day Wednesday: Rotisserie Chicken in a Crock Pot

Wow. It has been a busy week. I'm enjoying a lovely tension back ache as I write this. What better day to post about super easy chicken (with any luck, I'll get to a Mother's Day recipe and my birthday cake later on in the week). Also, I really wanted to post a picture of the whole chicken, but the pic's I had--well, they looked like a chicken had just walked into my crock pot, given itself a good plucking and sat down. In other words, they were not exactly perfectly appetizing.

Today's post is more of a method than a recipe. I got the idea from Busy Mommy (and if you want to see some non-lame pictures you should look there, although I should warn you that even at its best, my bird never looked quite that good. But then I have food posing laziness issues). Also, although the chicken turned out quite well, the rub wasn't my favorite.

Here's what you do:

1. Get yourself a thawed chicken that's between 3 and 4 pounds.

2. Rub it with salt. I recommend using 1/2 tsp. This will add flavor, but that's not all it will do. It will also sort of act as a bit of a brine and allow your chicken to hold more moisture. Rub the salt all over, inside and out.

3. Rub it with whatever other rub you want. The link above gives a paprika rub. Next time, I'll do a lemon/garlic rub (zest of a lemon and 3-4 garlic cloves, minced or mashed, and then a good squeeze from the lemon). To make a rub you put a bunch of your favorite herbs together and rub them all over the chicken. If you'd like, you can add a few teaspoons water (or lemon juice in my case) to your rub to make it into a paste. You'll want to rub the bird inside and out. I even loosen the skin from the breasts and rub some rub between the breast skin and meat (clearly I have no issues with invading others' space).

4. Put the bird in the crock pot WITHOUT ANY WATER. The recipe I used said to do this breast side up, although next time I'm going to do it breast side down because my chicken's breasts were just a wee bit dry (poor bird--what a way to go) and by cooking them on bottom, they'll eventually be soaked in the juices/fats from the bird.

5. Cook on high for 3-4 hours or on low for 6-7 hours.  The thickest part of the bird should read at least 165-170 degrees (though if you take it's temp, it may well read higher than that. Know that by the end of cooking, your bird will be in plenty of juices/fat.

6. That's it. You'll have meat for a meal or two and then even more leftovers to boot.