Rules for today:

Cannot use oven – stove-top/microwave/grill/sidewalk/hood-of-car all okay.

Extra points for a cool, refreshing dish.

My dish earns me no extra points for the cool/refreshing factor. But! It’s roast chicken! In a Crock Pot!

I’ve been cooking Tammy’s recipe for roast chicken for months now. Love it. It’s the easiest (no chopping ANYTHING) and it’s just lip-smacking good. And her idea to cover it in the oven, and place the chicken breast-side down makes for the juiciest roast you’ll ever taste. Okay, so maybe, if you prefer the crunchy skin of a traditionally roasted chicken, you may be in for a disappointment. But, you can always broil the thing for a few minutes at the end to get that result. We take the skin off anyway, so doesn’t matter to us what texture it is!

However, as the heat of the summer closed in around us, I felt less and less inclined to leave the oven on for the 2.5-3 hours required in the late afternoon/early evening. And I was heart-broken. Because this chicken is SO easy, SO tasty, AND produced the leftovers to make another two meals later that week! Oh, and forgot to mention CHEAP. Whole chickens are $0.79/lb at Aldi, and next week, at Marsh Supermarkets, they’re $0.58/lb. If I only had a separate freezer…

So, I had to work around this little oven-problem. This little heat-problem. Because this chicken is very necessary to our family. And I found my solution in the ever-handy Crock Pot!

Roast Chicken – Summer-Style

Ingredients:

Whole chicken
Garlic salt
Seasoned Salt
Lemon Pepper

1. Rinse chicken, and remove neck and giblets from cavity.
2. With chicken laying breast-side up in the sink, sprinkle liberally with seasonings.
3. Flip bird over and into a 5-6 qt crock pot (I forget what size it is – I just know it’s “the bigger one.”
4. Sprinkle liberally again (this should be the backside of the chicken).
5. Set Crock Pot on high for 4 hours or low for 8 hours. Every Crock Pot is different, so be sure your chicken is done (juice runs clear) and not over-done (dry breast meat is none-too-appealing). And adapt time accordingly for next time.

I know some people prefer to put foil balls under the chicken so it’s not resting in it’s own juices, but honestly that’s what I LOVE about this recipe. I’m disgusting like that, I guess. 🙂

The finished product:

(Note how the meat is just falling off the bones.)

What’s your solution for cooking in the summertime heat? Add the link to your individual post (not blog front page) to Mr. Linky below.

And we’re going to take next week off from Recipe Swap, as I will be out of town. And most likely hardly cooking. But most assuredly over-eating. I’ll tell you when we get back what I’ve decided the theme for the following week shall be. And if YOU want to make any contributions to the schedule, please let me know. 🙂