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.