Crockpot Rotisserie-Style Chicken

It wasn’t until three years ago that I first cooked a chicken.  Not a chicken breast, but a full-fledged chicken.  The one that requires you to reach your hand inside the bird and remove the neck, gizzard and heart, among other things, before cooking.  And, although I still am not a huge fan of doing it, I haven’t looked back. 

Making a whole chicken is extremely affordable, and super easy.  This week, I’m going to be sharing with you how to get 5 meals out of 1 chicken! 

The best part?  You can make them all in your crockpot. 

We’ll start the week off with a delicious rotisserie-style chicken. 

When stretching our chicken over 5 meals, I always start with cooking the whole chicken in the crockpot.  So easy and the chicken is amazingly tender. 

Even though the bird is the center item for this dinner, the mindset is that it is simply a side dish.  We serve this chicken with rice or potatoes, and lots of steamed veggies.  Each person gets a serving size (roughly the size of a deck of cards) and that’s it!  We fill up on the veggies so we can stretch the chicken. 

Immediately following dinner I de-bone the chicken and put the chicken carcass back in the crockpot to make broth.  You can find my broth directions here. 

Rotisserie Style Chicken – Adapted from Kelly

Ingredients

• 1 whole chicken (we recommend, organic), about 4-5 lbs.
• 1 T Paprika
• 1 T dried minced onion
• 3 tsp. minced garlic
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. black pepper
• 1/2 tsp. poultry seasoning

Directions

Lightly grease the inside of your crockpot with olive oil.  Then, place your chicken into the crockpot breast-side up.  Be sure that you’ve checked the inside of your chicken to remove the bag of neck, heart, etc!  It’s also good practice to rinse your chicken with cold water before placing it into the crockpot. 

Lightly spray your chicken with olive oil.  Then, sprinkle with paprika, minced onion, garlic, salt, black pepper and poultry seasoning. 

You’ll also want to put the neck of your chicken and any other chicken parts (e.g., liver, heart) that you like in the bottom of your crockpot.  These will be used for making broth and for the soup (tomorrow’s recipe)!  See them on the lower right in the image below?

Cover and cook on low for 8 hours, or until internal temperature reaches 180 degrees. 

Serve up small servings of chicken with plenty of sides, and then begin your preparation for making broth overnight in your crockpot. 

Enjoy!

Be sure to stop by tomorrow for meal #2 – Soup!