Chicken-o-Matic

I do like the rotisserie chickens you can buy in the deli section of the grocery store - they are yummy and convenient. But my frugal conscience sits on one shoulder, nagging "You know you can get twice the bird for the same price if you just took care of business yourself." So I'm trying to be better about roasting (read: slow cooking) my own chicken at home. Does it get the delicious crispy skin? Nope. But that's okay, since that's a health hazard anyway. I prefer to save my fat consumption for Snickers, as readers should well know by now.

I was able to buy a cage-free ("roam, little buddy, roam!") 4.5 pound chicken on sale for about $6. I got tons of meat from it:

Plate o' shredded goodness, plate o' discarded yuckies and a crockpot that needs a good external cleaning one o' these days.

This is enough to carry us through a full batch of enchiladas, a chicken salad for moi, a couple chicken quesadillas and tidbits for Landon to nosh on at dinner time. Between the initial rinse of the bird, the intermediary Lysol scrub down and the final shredding activities, it was only about 25 minutes effort.

Crockpot Chicken:

- Rinse chicken under cold water and pat dry (I also get rid of any of the weird stuff in the bird...*shudder*).

- Throw a few foil balls in bottom of crockpot; rest chicken on top

- Season with salt, pepper, paprika, etc. Whatever you want, really. I'm not sure if it makes much of a difference, because the skin is going to fall off anyways. Which brings me to my next point...

- I cooked the 4.5 pound bird for about 7 hours on low and the darn thing fell apart when I tried to pull it out. Like, seriously fell apart into 20 pieces. This was fine since I was looking to just use it for shredded meat, anyways.

The wishbone fell right out!

You don't know about the wishbone? Pssh, you are missing out, my friend. My mom used to give my brother and I the wishbone out of the Sunday chicken roast for us to break using our pinkies. Whoever got the largest piece out of the break had their wish come true. Well, that was the legend, at least. Now that I recall, I don't think I did ever get to meet Richard Marx for my 12th birthday. Hmm...