Eats: Slow Cooker Fake Rotisserie Chicken

Hello! Somewhere on the Internet recently I came across a recipe called "Slow Cooker Fake Rotisserie Chicken". I have to admit, I've never purchased a rotisserie chicken, nor had I cooked a whole chicken in the slow cooker before. It sounded like an easy way to cook a chicken, though, so I decided to give it a try. 

First, I'll give you the recipe, then tell you how it worked out.

Slow Cooker Fake Rotisserie Chicken

One whole chicken
Lawry's seasoned salt
Aluminum foil

Make five balls of aluminum foil and place in bottom of slow cooker. Remove giblets and neck from chicken; rinse chicken with water. Place chicken on top of foil balls (this keeps chicken out of its own grease). Sprinkle liberally with seasoned salt. Cook on low for 8-10 hours or on high for 6 hours. 

I forgot to take pictures of the before-and-after process, but I can report on how it cooked up. In a word, very well - the meat was so tender, it was falling off of the bones. 

Before this, the only time I cooked whole  poultry was at Thanksgiving. Although I liked the leftover meat and carcass for the makings of future meals, I never liked the messy tedium of taking the rest of the meat off the bones. 

But as I said, this slow cooker method resulted in such tenderness, it only took a few minutes to separate the meat from everything else. 

There was a cup or so of juice at the bottom of the slow cooker after I'd removed the chicken, so I poured that into a refrigerator storage container to solidify the fat. The next day, I removed the fat from the juice, then cooked the juice, the chicken bones and some water to make a very nice chicken broth. It, plus some of the meat, became the basis of a soothing chicken soup. I'd picked up either a bit of a cold or an allergy, and under those circumstances what could be better than homemade chicken soup? 

I liked the technique well enough that I picked up another whole chicken a couple of days ago to cook the same way. This time I took pictures, not that they're very interesting though:

The before shot. This time, I remembered that I have a vegetable steamer rack, so I used that in the bottom of the slow cooker instead of the aluminum foil balls. You can see the seasoned salt sprinkled on top. I suspect it's specified in the recipe more for a fake "browned" appearance (in order to mimic an actual rotisserie chicken) than to add a lot of flavor. I say this because I used the skin along with the bones when making the broth, and I didn't detect a salty taste when the broth was done. That was fine with me. I'm sure you could use other seasonings if you'd prefer, of course. 

After six hours of cooking on high:

Basically looks the same, although you can see that it'd shrunk a little. Came out just as tender as before. I separated the bones, skin, etc from the meat as before. If I don't feel like making broth right now, I can freeze that stuff along with the juices and cook them later. 

The cooked chicken I hadn't used in my soup was packaged up and put in the freezer. The second batch of chicken meat will end up there too. I have a number of recipes that call for adding a cup or two of cooked chicken, and it'll be handy to have some all ready to go! 

To sum up, this recipe is as easy as can be and the results are very good. Now, if only I could fit a turkey in my slow cooker...