Whole Chicken in the Crock Pot

This came out of the crock pot - who knew!

This week I feel like Christopher and I are running in two different directions. We try very hard to sit down together for dinner, but sometimes that is hard because we have meetings after work. Yesterday, I was the one who had the event at 6 pm but I still wanted to squeeze in dinner together before I left.

I bought a whole roasting chicken to have this week and decided to try it in the crock pot (my NEW crock pot - so excited to use it). It came out great! I thought it would be too soft and not flavorful, but that was not the case! I highly recommend saving time and cooking it this way. I did a lemon-garlic seasoning that worked well. This is what I did:

Inside the crock pot, I made a "bed" for the chicken to lay on of a sliced onion, carrots and celery. Then I took the washed and patted dry chicken and laid it inside the crock pot. I then sliced a lemon and three garlic cloves and threw them inside the chicken. On the outside of the chicken, I seasoned with salt, pepper and my handy lemon-garlic seasoning. That is it! I set my crock pot on low for 8 hours.

When it was time to eat, I took the chicken out (carefully) and placed it in a roasting pan. Then turned my oven onto broil and broiled the chicken for about 5-7 minutes so the skin could brown and crisp up. This worked perfectly to give the chicken the roasted look.

Bonus for creating the "bed" of veggies is that it propped up the chicken and all of the juices from the chicken collected in the bottom. BONUS - now I have the broth I need to make chicken noodle soup with the cooked veggies.

We enjoyed our chicken with leftover potatoes and veggies from the previous nights meal. I was able to come home and eat dinner within 25 minutes before turning around for my event.

BONUS - I now have the base for my chicken soup!