Crockpot Rosemary Apple Chicken

We bought a whole young chicken (very small) and I just put it in the crock pot. We also bought 3 apples that I intended to use with the pork, and then for some reason changed my mind. So I did some digging and found a great recipe using both, plus some rosemary from my garden. This all went into my 6 quart crockpot.

(I love the Crock Pot Lady's blog format, so I'm imitating her. I mean to flatter, not thieve!)

Ingredients (as seen above):

• A small chicken. I unwrapped it yesterday hoping to just plunk the frozen bird in, not realizing that there were weird bits of paper on the outside and the bag of guts inside, and I couldn't get them off/out. (It's my first time cooking a whole bird, be nice now.) So I had to put it in something else and re-wrap it and let it thaw the normal way. That's why it looks weird in the picture.
• 3 apples, Granny Smiths in this case. I peeled and diced them.
• Chives (about 3 stalks), chopped up. I ended up having 1/2 cup of diced chives. The original recipe also called for a whole sweet onion and a couple cloves of garlic, but I didn't have them.
• Fresh Rosemary. The original recipe said 3 stems, but how long? So I put three stems of varying sizes inside the bird, one tucked in each wing, and I finely chopped the leftover little bits to mix into the liquid. Maybe it'll be too much, but I like rosemary.
• 1/2 c. chicken stock; I've never used chicken bullion, and this is actually the granule stuff; the jar said 1 t. to 1 c. boiling water, so I did 1/2 t. to 1/2 c. boiling water.
• To the stock I added: Kosher S&P, 1/4 t. Garlic salt (to make up a little bit for the missing garlic), and 1/2 t. dried onion (and then it clumped weird so I sprinkled more on top to make it even).

Directions:

• Lock the cats in another room
  
• Wash and chop/dice/hack all the things that need chopping/dicing/hacking.
• Prepare the chicken stock; add the spices to it.
• Prep the bird; take out the bag-o-innards, and I cut off as much fatty skin as I could because I'm just that way.

• Put apple chunks and chives in the bottom of the crock, reserving 1 apple's worth and some chives. Put the bird in the crock. Stuff the bird with rosemary stalks, some chives, and as many apple chunks as will fit. In my case, it was just about one apple.
• Pour the stock/spices over the top, and dump in any remaining ingredients.
• Turn it on high and cook it until you know that it's safe to eat. I don't own a thermometer, so after 3 hours on high, I plan to put it on low and go out for the afternoon, get my free crunchy taco at Taco Bell, get a free mocha latte at Barnes & Noble, talk to Lanse for a while, and probably eat the chicken around 8. I figure if it's falling off the bone, it probably reached a safe temperature.

When I put it into the crock pot, this is what it looked like!

I'll update when we've eaten some to tell you if it's worth it. It's smelling pretty darn good right now though!

Update 1: the liquid level is now at about 3/4 of the crock pot, and the steam is making bubbles out the side of the lid. So maybe reduce the stock to 1/4 c. I let some steam out just now, since it was making hissing noises when the wet escaped.

Verdict:
It was very tasty. Very tasty indeed! I served it over whole grain rice, with a side of green veggies. Neither of us ate enough though, so we crashed big time... like rice tends to do, this made us feel full before we'd actually provided our bodies with enough energy, so keep that in mind when you serve it up. We're now going on Day 3 of leftovers; the first leftover day we just ate the chicken again with a veggie, yesterday I made stoup (see next post), and today I think I may just have turkey sandwiches for lunch. Yay!