Tuesday, February 14, 2012

A nifty trick

I use broth a lot in the recipes I cook, because it adds good flavor without a lot of calories or fat. But I refuse to buy broth any more. Store-bought broth is expensive and can be high in sodium. Plus I don't know how it's made. With my broth, there's no added salt or any sort of preservative. But making broth takes time and I don't care for the texture of the meat when it's been basically boiled all day long.

Last week, I learned a new way to cook the bird. My daughter-in-law, Jen, puts a whole chicken in her slow cooker and roasts it all day (or all night) long. She doesn't add any water, which surprised me at first. But really, it's just like roasting a bird in the oven, only at a lower temperature. Once the bird is cooked, she picks the meat off and makes stock with the carcass. What I really like is that this method means I can put the bird in the slow cooker and go do other things. Plus using a whole bird is a lot cheaper than using chicken pieces.

Here's my first slow-cooker chicken:



As soon as the chicken cools, I'll be taking the meat off the bone for other meals and then making broth of my own. This chicken probably had a lot of water injected into it, because there's a lot of water/juicy stuff in the slow cooker. So this may turn out more like a boiled chicken after all, but I hope not. And if it does, well I'll try again with better chicken.

9 comments:

Jeanne said...

Interesting. There used to be a restaurant here with a Polynesian theme called The Kahiki that made a dish called Chicken Melagasy that was out-of-this-world tender. I wonder if cooking the chicken this way would come anywhere close. And I can get farm-raised chickens with nothing injected.

edj3 said...

Jeanne, it fell off the bone. I couldn't pick up the chicken--I had to debone it in the crock pot. Even the breast was crazy tender.

Ben Shear said...

when you make the broth and then use it in recipes you'll have to add more salt than normal to get it to taste right. Because homemade broth doesn't have salt (you can add it), your recipes that use it will need more salt to taste good, it's still worth it imo.

Hugh said...

Will have to give this a shot - ta!

Jolo said...

I usually pick up drumsticks (with the back attached) at the local grocery store (5 kg for 11 bucks!) and use them for broth.

I simmer them in a pot on the stove for about 45 minutes (or so) and then discard the bones and the skin. I use the chicken for Mexican food and the broth for everything else.

edj3 said...

You crazy Canadians with your grams :-)

Jolo said...

Hey, your kid's kids call you that!

edj3 said...

No, they call me Nana!

Kent J said...

So kilograms = matricide?