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Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Frugal Foods: whole roast chicken

Have you checked out Jenn at Frugal Upstate's series on frugal foods yet? Past topics have included eggs, tuna, beans, and ground beef. This week's ingredient is chicken-- specifically, whole chickens or wings or thighs. Here's my favorite frugal whole chicken recipe:

Crockpot Roast Chicken
1 3-4lb. whole chicken (I usually wait and buy these on clearance)
Season All Seasoning Salt
1 chopped onion
chopped garlic to taste (1 TBSP or so)
Place several golfball-sized balls of foil in the bottom of your crockpot. (This keeps the chicken from getting soggy from sitting in the juices.) Rinse chicken and pat dry. Place onion & garlic in cavity of chicken. Rub all outer surfaces of chicken with seasoned salt. Place in crockpot on top of foil balls, and cook on low all day.

My family thinks this tastes just like the roasted chicken you can buy in the grocery store deli- but this version is much cheaper! :)

Here's another frugal chicken recipe I use often... it actually uses chicken tenders, but I'm sure it would work with thighs, as well. Check out the Chicken Hurry recipe previously posted on this blog.

P.S. Added 7/15/08: I made one of these last week, and for the price of a $3.59 chicken, it was three meals for my family. The first night, we had the chicken with stuffing and a veggie. The second night my husband ate his plain, the kids and I chopped ours up and added it into some soup. The third night, I used all the leftover bits in a pasta dish. Three meals for a family of four from a $3.59 chicken... that's what I call frugal! :)
(And yes I know I should have boiled the bones for broth, but I just didn't have time last week.)

6 comments:

Joanna said...

I love how easy this is!

Tiffany @ Lattes And Life said...

I've done this...but never knew about the aluminum foil balls under the chicken. I'll have to try that next time, since I stopped making ths because the chicken got so mushy and fell apart.

Annie Jones said...

I should try this. I've never done a "dry" roast in the crockpot before.

Thanks for stopping by my blog. Those dumplings are just one (of 4) ways I make chicken and dumplings. They are also the most difficult, but very worth it. Usually I just mix up homemade biscuits (or from Bisquick) and drop them on top.

Jenn @ Frugal Upstate said...

Thanks so much for linking to this for the "Frugal Food Series: Chicken".

I just love using this technique, now that I have my mom's old large crockpot that will actually fit a chicken in it :)

vicvic said...

Wow - I never thought of doing the dry roasting, though I have cooked many a whole chicken in the crock pot! Thanks for the tip!

Sorry about your spammer. I had one of those and went to moderated comments. what a pain.

Melissa said...

Thanks for sharing this recipe. I plan to try it soon.

I recently read about using the crockpot to make chicken stock, and I'm going to try that, too!