Originally posted on July 10, 2005.

Why slave over a stove or oven, when you can let your crock pot do all the work for you? Making a chicken and some veggies in a crock pot is easy. Chopping the veggies and prepping the chicken takes maybe 15 minutes tops, and the crock pot then does all the work over the next 4 (on high) or 8 to 9 (low, and suggested) hours while you’re at work or out. And four good home cooked meals for a little over $6 bucks is cool too.

Basic Instructions:

1. Thaw chicken overnight in refrigerator, or a couple of hours in a sink full of cold water (or buy the night before and leave in the refrigerator to save the trouble of thawing).
2. Peel and chop potatoes, carrots, onion and garlic.
3. Remove extra stuff (heart, liver, etc) from inside chicken and rinse it out good.
4. Load chicken and vegetables into crock pot.
5. Top off with water (and add a can of chicken broth if desired).
6. Set crock pot on low and let cook for 8 or 9 hours (suggested), or on high for 4 hours.

Now onto the photos for the rest!

Here are the basic ingredients. A chicken, a few potatoes, some carrots, an onion and some garlic. Garlic, in addition to making things taste good, is said to have some incredible health benefits. I usually buy organic garlic, and other veggies, since organic farming produces healthier food that actually has some vitamins and nutrients in it.

Here’s all the veggies after peeling and chopping it all up, woo.

Here’s my dude, standing up next to his gizzard, heart, liver and the rest of his neck. They usually include all that stuff inside, so reach in and pull it all out before cooking.

Note: For safe handling it’s best to only work with meat (especially poultry!) on a plastic cutting board. But I’m using the wooden one here since it looks better in photos. If you must use wood be sure to wash it with warm soapy (preferably anti-bacterial) soap when finished. And never wash your wood cutting board in the dishwasher.

Here’s another view from the rear of the bird.

Here’s our little guy’s heart. A male chicken’s heart beats around 286 beats per minute (over 4 times as fast as the average human heart), and a female’s beats around 312 beats per minute (I guess female chickens are more high strung too, heh). They often include things like the heart and liver inside the bird since some people will fry it up in some oil and eat it.

Here’s the chicken’s liver. There’s a lot of iron in liver, so it’s healthy to eat if you’re so inclined. Just fry it up in some olive oil in over medium heat on the stove. I wonder if my own liver looks this healthy? Probably not, d’oh.

Here’s the chicken’s neck, with the “waddle” flesh under it.. Some people these extra chicken parts for making chicken stock or broth. I always just toss it though.

And here’s the loaded up crock pot. The chicken and all the veggies are in there, and it’s topped off with some water. Here I often include a can of chicken broth before topping off with water (but not all the way to the top, since the bird is gonna release more juices later), but that’s optional. Quite a bit of natural juices come out of the bird during cooking anyway.

Here’s the bird about half way through. You can see the natural juices and broth have increased the liquid some, which is why we don’t completely top off with liquid to start. The place is smelling pretty good now.

After a good 9 hours or so on low the meat about falls off the bones. I usually take the turkey baster and suck off all the broth and put it in a sauce pan (the pan on the left) for making gravy and cooking dumplings in afterwards, then pick out all the meat and veggies and put them in a container for the fridge.. Great leftovers and chicken sandwiches!

Pan frying some boneless/skinless chicken breasts, or oven baking, (I’ve done them both on occasion) doesn’t get close to this, and is much more work. And it costs a bunch more too.. Less Yummy + More Expensive + More Work = BLAGH.

I’m tired tonight, and it’s late.. Check back another time for dumplings and gravy making..