I didn’t feel like cooking today so when I got up this morning, I threw a whole chicken into my crock pot. I don’t bother to place it on a rack. I just sit it directly on the ceramic. I dusted it with garlic powder and paprika. I don’t add any water at all. I just place the chicken into a dry crock pot. The chicken creates a ton of its own broth.
I put the lid on and cook it on high for about 5 hours. Done. And simple.
Ten minutes before dinner, I made a spinach/romaine salad and threw a few cauliflower florets into my steamer.
I don’t throw away the broth from the chicken when it’s done. I pour all of the broth into a Ziploc bag and freeze it for a future meal. (I got about 1-1/2 cups of broth out of the crock!)Then when I go to make a future meal that calls for chicken broth, rather than open a can of plain store bought broth, I pull out the bag of my good seasoned broth from the freezer, thaw it out and use it instead of canned stuff. Because it’s well seasoned from the chicken, it really enhances whatever I’m using it in. If I’m making soup, I don’t even bother to thaw it. I just plunk the frozen broth right in with the soup liquid that’s in the pot and it thaws right out and melts down into the soup, giving the soup added delicious flavor.