I wasn’t quite sure if I was going to post this or not, but since the images came out and I did a few things differently this time I thought I would offer it up.
I’ve been wanting to do a whole chicken in the crock-pot since I did the pork, yesterday was the day. I called it Eyeball Chicken because I opened the fridge and looked for, then grabbed stuff. No measuring, used my eyeball for portion control. I did use a lot of the ingredients and portions from my Crock-pot pork shoulder taco heaven – Or, I did it, I did it, I did it !!!
As previously stated, ya can’t just dump stuff in to the pot and walk away, you must do some extra things to bring everything up. Meaning, after cooking for 3 or 4 hours, the chicken was not brown or appealing to say the least. I jacked my oven up to 550, installed the bird to a cookie sheet with a cooling rack, popped it in the oven for 15 minutes, worked like a charm.
Before you prep anything, put your cup of broth or beer in the pot and jack the heat, high or low.
Whole chicken – washed dried and trussed – rub with favorite rub – s&p, granulated onion, dried parsely and ground celery seed, whatever.

liquid – 1 cuppa – add to pot, turn on
carrots – peeled & sliced
celery – peeled a bit and sliced
onion – mine was big so didn’t add it all
mushrooms – sliced a few times – way less than bite size
garlic – as much as you want, smooshed then sliced once
tomatillos – brown in broiler
I realize my choice of ingredients here pretty basic, except maybe for the tomatillos. Am still attempting to get my process down, then I can move on. Ya dork.
Install veggies to warming pot, lay trussed and rubbed chicky over the top. Install lid and walk away until everything is done, mine was on high for nearly 3.5 to 4 hours.
Sigh, looks like your typical crock-pot meal, the chicken was really pale and the broth was thin. What to do?
The chicken needed color, decided not to use the propane torch, figured I’d burn the rub. So, I jacked my oven’s temp to 550, rack in the middle. I needed it hot and fast as the chicken was already done, had to get the heat everywhere at once. Used a cookie sheet with a steel cooking rack, installed chicken to oven for 15 minutes.

Separate the veggies from the broth, reduce broth by 1/2, added a little salt. I could have used a thickener to bring it to a gravy, but there were quite a bit of veggies left, quite a bit. Dumped half the veggie supply in to the broth and used the motorboat to whiz everything to the consistency you see in the spoon above. While it did have more of a vegetable taste to it, there was plenty of broth and chicken fat to bring it around nicely.

I found with a little bit of work before and after can really offer up some great results. It was just me and Z for dinner, but nearly the entire bird was gone in 30 minutes, it was that good. I know what you’re thinking punk. “Oh Biggles, if I’m going to brown the meat or go to that much trouble at the end, I might as well just use the oven or stove-top.” I get that, I do. But you see, what you’re doing is breaking up all the work so you can go do something else for the rest of the day. And, if you’re late coming back, or forget to come home due to beers, it’s no big deal.
xo, Biggles

Here’s the post I was talking about yesterday, did this a week ago or more.
Been looking for a simple crock-pot recipe/method, something that didn’t require too much effort. I have learned though, that one really should take the extra few minutes to brown this and/or that, reduce a juice, do a little more than just dump, cook and pray. I did it.
I’m still in the experimentation stage, so headed out to find some stunt meat. Something inexpensive and easy to deal with, a pork butt. My local grocery had some mystery butt in a clingy net, perfect. For all the reasons stated above, and because it was portioned in to an equal log of meat. I could count on the same cooking time from end to end, non-confrontational.
My Crock-pot is a 5 quart rig.
Pork butt – 4 to 5 pounds
BBQ dry rub
Flour
Carrots – 4-5 peeled & sliced
Celery – 2-3 stalks peeled & sliced
Onion – 1 whole – mediumish
Garlic – Fresh as much as you like (4-6 cloves depending on size), smooshed – whole
Chicken broth – 1 cup
If you’re actually reading this for a tidbit of juicy goodness for procedure, there is at least one thing in there you might enjoy. See if you can find it.
Either bring the meat to near room temp or not, considering how long this sucker takes to cook it probably doesn’t matter. I didn’t and it came out perfect.
Install broth to crock pot and turn to high or low depending on how fast or slow you want this to go. Clean, prep and slice all your veggies (not the dry rub) and install to pot for the pre-heat process.
Get your cast iron pan hot with some oil in there, maybe 3 swirls around the pan. Pat the roast generously with the BBQ dry rub. Then, roll the sucker with flour. Shake a bit to get any excess off, but make sure the roast is covered in both. Install to pan and brown well, 6 minutes a side?

Install your butt to the crock and put the lid on, yer done.
8 some odd hours later, when your butt is soft and juicy, pull. Remove netting, using two forks shred the sucker, set aside. Strain the bits from the juice using a strainer of some ilk, use a fat strainer and get rid of the liquid fat (there’s enough already even for me) reduce juice by maybe 1/4 to 1/3. Combine everything together in the large stock pot you used to reduce. And here’s the tidbit I mentioned earlier, add more of your BBQ dry rub to the meat & juice slurry.
Here’s the scoop, it doesn’t matter if you’re smoking, grilling or roasting a large hunk of meat, getting your spicy flavors to the internal portions isn’t possible unless you’re injecting. I’ve tried injecting and it’s a pain in the butt, so to speak and doesn’t deliver the flavors I can get by adding a little of the dry rub later on. Try it.
Simmer a little more and you’re done. Do with it what you will.

With little effort, this will work with any cut of meat that lends itself to a long cooking time. Even the boys did a face plant in the meat and devoured it.
I bless this recipe and method,
The Good Reverend Doctor Biggles