How to Cook a Whole Chicken
Cooking and eating whole chicken is easy, cost effective, and delicious. Once you’ve decided to make the switch to natural or organic chicken… The price goes up for sure… but there are ways to get around this. One of those is buying cheaper cuts of meat like the whole chicken. There are two ways I cook my chicken. You can buy whole chicken at your local grocery store, farmers market, or even online.
One is to roast it in the oven. You’ll want a good roasting pan or you can use aluminum foil over a cake pan. I like this because it gives the skin a yummy glaze and I can easily throw in other vegetables like potatoes and carrots with it and have a whole meal.
I also love cooking it in a crockpot. I can throw it in and basically forget about it for a while. Also I generally put some extra water in and use the chicken broth to make gravy or soup with.
Before starting to cook the chicken you’ll want to make sure it is defrosted or it will take all day. To defrost a whole chicken you can:
- leave it in the fridge overnight. Depending on the size of the bird it may take more than one night/day. For a large turkey you may need up to 3 nights to fully defrost.
- You can defrost the chicken by placing it in a sealed bag in lukewarm water. You’ll want to change the water every 30 minutes. Defrosting times are: 1 pound=1hour, 3-4 pounds=2-3 hours. Over that you’ll want to estimate about 30 minutes per pound.
Cooking a Whole Chicken in the Oven
- 1 medium onion
- 1 whole chicken
- salt
- pepper
- potatoes or carrots (optional)
- Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
- Place chicken in center of roasting pan.
- Peel and cube potatoes and carrots. Place in roasting pan.
- Dice onion and add to pan.
- Salt and pepper liberally. Add water to pan, cover about a 1/2 to inch of bottom of pan with water.
- Let cook for 1 hour and 30 min. or until chicken is cooked through and potatoes and carrots are tender. (if chicken is frozen let cook for 3 hours.)
Cook a Whole Chicken in the Crockpot
- Whole Chicken
- 1 Medium onion
- 1 Clove garlic
- 2 tsp. Sage
- Place chicken in crockpot. Dice onion and add. Fill crock pot halfway with water. Sprinkle top of chicken with sage and garlic. Let cook on high for 3-5 hours.
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