Recipe: Crockpot Whole Chicken

First and foremost, let me climb up on my soapbox and rave about how much I love my crockpots. Yes, the word crockpot was plural because we own three. Our largest is a 5 quart I believe, the smaller is a 3 qt. and we also have an individual sized one. If you don't own a slow cooker (doesn't have to be Crockpot brand), I highly recommend investing in one or asking for it as a gift in the future. There are all kinds of models out there, ranging from a dial you simply turn to high, medium, or low, ones with preset hours you can choose from (I.e. high for 4 hours or low for 10) and now a days they even have ones that you can control via Wi-Fi from your phone. Now, I do think the Wi-Fi is a bit much (do people actually use this?) but I do really appreciate the feature of set times on our larger one. The beauty of this is that I can set it for say "8 hours on low" before I leave for work, it cooks for the full 8 hours, and then automatically switches to the "warm" setting. The warm setting keeps the food at a hot enough temperature that it is safe to eat, but doesn't allow the food to become over cooked. I call that a win-win. But really, slow cookers can save you so much time (they virtually do all the work for you), had endless possible uses, are relatively affordable (and often very easy to find at thrift stores in perfect condition for dirt cheap), use very little energy, and in recipes like this, save you lots of money while yielding lots of food! Can you say win-win-win-win-win?!

 I started using this recipe from Lisa Leake's 100 Days of Real Food Cookbook last fall when the book came out. It very quickly became of our favorites (Jason's especially) and is so versatile.

Crockpot Whole Chicken and Overnight Stock

Ingredients:

2 tsp. smoked paprika (unsmoked is fine also)

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. onion powder

1 tsp. dried thyme

1/2 tsp. garlic powder

1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper

1/4 tsp. ground black pepper

1 onion, peeled and cut into large pieces

1 whole chicken (approximately 4 pounds)

1. Combine all the spices in a small bowl, mix and set aside.

2. Place the pieces of onion in the bottom of the slow cooker.

3. Remove any giblets from the chicken, and rub the spice mixture over the entire bird.

4. Place the chicken on top of the pieces of onion and place the lid on. There is no need for any liquid to be added.

5. Cook on high for 4 hours or on low for 7, until the chicken is tender enough to nearly fall off the bone.

So when I talk about getting some serious bang for your buck, this is a recipe that does just that. We buy whole organic chickens at Costco for $2.99 per pound. So this bird costs me about $12 (given that it's approximately 4 pounds). The organic onion costs about $0.50 and I'll tack in another $0.50 for spices. So I have $13 invested in this recipe, give or take the weight of the actual chicken. What we do is cook the bird while we are at work, out running errands, etc. and then enjoy the legs (as pictured) when it finishes cooking with a couple of side dishes. Then I pull each breast off the bone, pair it with another side dish or two, and there are our lunches for the next day. But as you can tell from the photos, there is still a lot of meat left. So I shred all the remaining meat and put it into a Tupperware for meals the rest of the week. We use this in things like Chicken and Veggie Soup, Chicken Chop Salad, as the entrée with veggies, and when not on Whole30, things like Chicken Noodle or Chicken Tortilla Soup, Chicken Enchiladas, Quesadillas, Pastas... lots of possibilities. After eating both the legs and reserving the breasts for the next day's lunches, we still get about 4.5 cups of shredded chicken, which will help us build at least 3 additional meals for each of us. Now, that right there is a decent amount of yield for such minimal effort.

But, where we really see significant savings is by using the bones and cooking liquid to make homemade chicken stock. Lisa made this process SO simple with her process, I can't believe it took me this long to do this. All you do is leave the bones, onions and liquid (so everything but the edible meat and any visible fat or skin) in the crockpot and fill it completely with water. You can also throw in other things you might need to use up like celery or fresh parsley. Set it to low, and allow it to cook for 8-12 hours. I let this process happen overnight, then in the morning I take a large mixing bowl and place my mesh strainer over top. I line the strainer with cheesecloth, and filter the stock to remove any of the bones, onions, spices and such. What you're left with is rich, delicious and nutritious stock. I got 12 cups of stock from this past chicken and stored them in my freezer. I'll use this later for soups, rice, quinoa, etc. Considering that a 4 cup carton of organic chicken stock costs $3.99 at the store, I basically used my $13 investment to pay for 3 cartons of chicken stock, and got one carton, plus ALL the meat for our meals for free. And this is when I realized I will never buy chicken stock again. *Steps off of soapbox*

Printable Recipe Here