This past week was pretty exciting for me….I cooked a whole chicken for the first time and didn’t screw it up. Pretty impressive right?
I’ve been told before that cooking whole chickens is pretty simple and a great way to have chicken on hand throughout the week. For some reason, cooking an entire bird is incredibly intimidating to me. Maybe it’s because you have to remove the giblets and I’m not sure I ever get all those out…or maybe it’s because it’s shaped like a bird and that’s kinda weird…either way, it’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a while.
I bought two whole chickens from Costco like, 4 months ago (my husband thought they’d be bad by now, but alas, he was wrong!), and finally defrosted them the other day.
It has been way too hot here to use the oven so I thought I’d give the slow cooker a try (wasn’t sure if that would give off the same amount of heat. I don’t think it did).
I used this recipe ( basically just the spice mixture) except no onions, didn’t have any on hand. I also didn’t refrigerate the bird overnight I just cooked it in the slow cooker for 8 hours, or until the meat was falling off the bone.
First, I removed the giblets. I thought I got everything but we found some organs in the bird after it cooked…oops. Next, I patted the chicken dry, then rubbed it with the spice mixture and placed it breast down in the slow cooker. That’s it! It was pretty easy, just a little weird rubbing down a whole, raw chicken…does raw chicken gross anyone else out?
Even though dealing with a whole raw chicken is not my favorite, this turned out awesome. It was so tender and it really is convenient having meat in the fridge for a few days…MOIST chicken meat too.
We had it for dinner along with some steamed green beans. Healthy and delicious!
Overall, not too hard. I will definitely do it again. One of these days I’ll try it in the oven so I can get crispier skin. The slow cooker is great though. It’s easy and the chicken is super moist.
Have you cooked whole chickens before?
I’ve actually never cooked a whole one on my own! I love this recipe though… look so simple and it seems to have come out perfectly! I definitely need to try it!
If my food aversion to chicken wasn’t so strong right now, this would go on our meal plan 😉
I’ve done a whole chicken in the oven, but I’ve wanted to try it this way for a long time. Yum!