Slow Cooker Roast Chicken

All the signs of an early spring are arriving to the homestead.  Our chick shipment will be arriving next week, baby bunnies have arrived, and the horses are doing their spring shedding.  The long hibernation days of winter are gone and with that comes lots of work.  My favorite tool to have around when the days get busy is my slow cooker.  Personally, I know that I have more patience and energy to deal with dinner in the morning than after a day working outside.  One of my favorite meals, and an easy one, is a slow roasted chicken.  And if you add veggies to the slow cooker, it’s a one pot meal.  Below is my tried-and-true recipe for our family.

Ingredients

1 large potato per person cut into cubes

1 bag of baby carrots

2 white onions cut into cubes

1 whole defrosted chicken

1 cup of room temperature butter (Honestly more doesn’t hurt)

Salt

Pepper

Oregano

Parsley

Basil

Thyme

paprika

1.       Add the cut potatoes, carrots, and onions to the bottom of the slow cooker.

2.      Salt and Pepper vegetables to taste.

3.      Ina small bowl, mix the softened butter with the salt, pepper, oregano, parsley, basil. paprika and thyme.  Amount of each seasoning will very on your individual taste.  Season with your heart.

4.      Cut small holes in the skin of the chicken buy both breast and thighs and rub the herb butter mixture under the skin of the chicken.  Any butter left over can be rubbed directly on the outside skin of the chicken. 

5.      Place the chicken breast side up on top of the veggies in the slow cooker.

6.      Cook on low for 6-8 hours.

Once the chicken reached an internal temperature of 165 degrees it is ready to eat but I usually leave it on low all day.  At that point the meat just falls apart and is very juicy. 

If you want to use all the parts of the chicken including the bones its easy to make overnight chicken stock.  After dinner you can return the chicken carcass to the slow cooker (no need to clean it before hand from the original cooking because all those juices and drippings will add to the flavor).  Fill the slow cooker with water and if wanted add salt.  I never add salt because I prefer to season my stock as needed when cooking with it in the future.  Turn on low over night.  In the morning your house will smell amazing, and you will have home made chicken stock ready to be put in your freezer for later meals.

 For an extra flavor boost to your stock, you can add vegetable scraps.  I keep a gallon size Ziplock in my freezer and whenever I am cooking my vegetable scraps go into that freezer bag.  If I want a deeper flavor stock, I take some of those frozen veggie scraps and add it to the stock water before turning it on.