Recipe - Crock Pot Chicken

Dinner yesterday was crock pot chicken based on the recipe here. Changes I made:

• Used a lot of fresh thyme from my garden, probably 1-2Tbsp
• Used more pepper than was called for, and no white pepper
  
• Roughly cut up a granny smith apple and stuck it in the middle of the bird

I also rubbed the spice mixture under the skin of the chicken. I figure that's a better way to get the flavor. It's kind of gross to work the skin off the bird with your fingers, but hey, it's in the name of gastronomical excellence! I did end up tearing the skin above the breast though :(

I really liked the way it turned out. I think I cooked it for a total of 8 hours in my crock pot. That might have been a bit too long. The breast meat was ever-so-slightly dry, and the internal temp was somewhere around 190F (done for poultry is 165F). The dryness could also have been a result of the torn skin.

Once dinner was over, I got ambitious. After cleaning the rest of the meat off the carcass, I threw all the remains, minus some giant gobbets of fat, back into the crock pot. After adding enough water to come to just under the top of the bones, I let the whole thing cook on low overnight. This made some really terrific chicken stock that I'll use in a soup or something soon. Next time I might add a couple of carrots and some celery to make the stock even heartier. After straining through some cheese cloth, the stock was quite clear and a nice dark color. No pictures though, it's not that interesting.

ttfn.