Whole Chicken in a Crock-Pot

One of my go to easy meals for a busy weekday night is a chicken in a crock-pot. It is so easy and amazingly delicious that you can't help but
add it to the weekly rotation maybe even a couple times if you are super busy. You throw it in the crock-pot in the morning or even by noon then all you have to do in the evening is whip up some easy side dishes like roasted red potatoes or coconut/cinnamon squash and sweet potatoes and some steamed veggies or a salad and voila, easy nutritious meal that the whole family will love. My kids love this and I love the little bit of leftover chicken to use in a salad the next day for lunch. We have started buying organic, free-range whole chickens which I find either at Costco or through our CSA as an add on. I noticed after cooking the organic chicken compared to the conventional I am actually able to pull the whole chicken out of the crock-pot to carve it up, whereas the conventional chicken fell apart so much that we ended up throwing out a lot of good meat because it was a pain to get out of the pan after deteriorating so much. Anyways on with the recipe, I hope you love it as much as we do!

 Ingredients:

• 1 Whole Chicken 4-6 pounds
• 1 Lemon
• Garlic whole bulb unpeeled and unchopped
• 2 tbsp olive oil 
• salt and pepper
• additional seasonings (chili powder, or herbs or your choosing)

Method:

Clean out the cavity of the chicken, wash and pat dry the chicken.  Place chicken in the crock-pot ( use a larger size one that it will obviously fit in).  Cut lemon in half squeeze a little bit of the juice over the chicken then stuff the lemon halves and the whole garlic bulb into the cavity.  Drizzle olive oil on top of the chicken and sprinkle with salt, pepper and any other seasonings that you fancy.  You can either set it to cook for 8 hours or 6 hours, I usually start mine at noon and it is done by 6.  I don't recommend doing it on 4 hours it doesn't come out as moist and in some cases it may not even cook through properly.  Enjoy, serve with a carb dense veggie dish and green veggie dish to round out the meal, check out my sides recipe tab for ideas.