Eats
Slow Cooker Odyssey: The Chicken
Last month I escaped to Rivendell Writers Colony. Named for an Elven realm of Middle Earth in J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels, Rivendell is an idyllic retreat in Sewanee, Tennessee, with astounding natural beauty, disorienting solitude, fluffy comforters, and intermittent wi-fi. A weekend at this haven with my writers’ group was just what I needed to kickstart a long-overdue rewrite of my novel.
That’s what I told my family, right before I peeled out of the driveway, leaving them wondering where Mommy was going with a bottle of Tennessee whiskey and a slow cooker.
Eight to five are quiet hours at Rivendell, so when I arrived at 10 a.m., my friends were toiling with near-monastic focus. I still needed to acclimate to the silence, so I got to work on our dinner. I chopped an onion and some O-scale potatoes, peeled a whole head of garlic, threw it all in the pot and dropped a chicken on top. I rubbed salt on the skin, put the lid on, and set the heat to Low. It was now 10:07 a.m. I could ignore that chicken for up to eight hours.
I know what you’re thinking: “Shouldn’t we truss the chicken? Perhaps with a jaunty corset of ginger-colored Euroflax linen?”
Y’all, we have talked about this kind of thing. We on the Slow Cooker Odyssey are not chicken-trussers. We have other things to do, like knitting with ginger-colored Euroflax linen. And reworking novels.
That said, I still wasn’t ready to start needling out narrative knots from 350 pages of romantic comedy, so I strolled to the scenic bench named for author Walker Percy, who spent childhood summers in the surrounding woods. Mountain lore holds that Percy’s Perch, overlooking a breathtaking bluff, inspires visiting writers. I needed inspiration, so I sat.
And sat.
And sat.
And sat.
I suppose it was a stretch to seek rom-com inspiration from the ghost of the man who wrote Love in the Ruins. But Nora Ephron does not have a bench at Rivendell. In any case, Walker Percy left me sitting alone—like Meg Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle.
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Meanwhile, back at the slow cooker, I found the chicken glistening and garlic-scented but looking a little pasty. That’s the problem with slow cookers: You can’t get a Baywatch glow or crisped amber skin that melts on the tongue like a holy hybrid of stained glass and bacon.
But just like Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally, you can fake it. All you need is a colorful spice rub and, if possible, a few minutes under the broiler.
Ransacking the Rivendell cupboard, I found a reddish-brown medley of chipotle chili and paprika, which, when massaged onto the skin, made the bird look positively sun-kissed. (Oh, look, there’s some apple butter. And some mustard. I’ll use those too, later.)
The rest of that glorious afternoon on the Cumberland Plateau, I wandered from porch to hammock to pond to bluff, and when the shadows lengthened in Lost Cove below Rivendell, I found my studious companions closing their laptops and opening a bottle of wine on the terrace.
Fruits of Our Labors
They took turns reading aloud the beautiful words they’d written during quiet hours, and when it came my turn to share the fruits of my day’s labor, I unveiled . . . a chicken.
Because, though I had planned on days of diligence at Rivendell, I didn’t hit a lick at a snake once I got there. I’m tempted to blame Walker Percy. And the hammock.
But I can’t blame my Hamilton Beach, because, to the extent that I got any words on paper, it was thanks to a slow-cooked bird with mustard-apple sauce, which was so juicy, easy, and comforting that I wrote the recipe down right here.
Chicken and Potatoes with Mustard-Apple Sauce
Ingredients:
1 whole chicken that fits in your slow cooker (giblets removed)
1 pound small potatoes, cut in half
1 onion, chopped
1 head of garlic, whole cloves, peeled
Red-colored spice blend
Butter
For the pan sauce:
2 cups of reserved liquid from chicken
2 tbsp. Dijon mustard
2 tbsp. fruit preserves, such as apple butter, raspberry, cherry, fig
1 tablespoon butter
Chicken:
Lay potatoes, garlic cloves and onion in bottom of slow cooker. Place chicken on top. Salt liberally. Rub with spice mix. Cook on Low for between 6 and 8 hours. Immediately before serving, slather bird with butter and place under broiler (on bottom rack) until skin crisps to a golden brown (about 5 minutes). Carve chicken and serve with potatoes over bed of arugula. Drizzle with pan sauce.
Pan sauce:
Transfer liquid from slow cooker to a pan and simmer. Add fruit preserves and mustard. Stir and reduce by half. Add butter and stir.
Head over to The Lounge, where the conversation continues about slow cookers, Dinner Last Night, and what everybody’s cooking for the holidays.
I’m giggling like a school girl with a crush on the captain of culinary arts.
I have a testimonial! This is super delicious even if you forget to make the pan sauce. And the garlic.
If you’ve got an hour or two at the end of the day, roasting a chicken –proper Ina Garten “For Jeffrey” style– is still the way to go, but if you want to walk in the door and have a plateful of dinner ready to go on arrival, this is genius. Super juicy and the potatoes are so chickeny it takes me back to the shtetl. (Disclaimer: I have a lot of things in my family history but probably not a shtetl.)
Well said, Kay. Barefoot Contessa. Also, I am a sucker for the Lee Bros. recipe for roast chicken in a cast-iron skillet, on page 193 of “Simple Fresh Southern.” But if need to walk into the house and find dinner ready, slow cooker for the win!
As someone who is “domestically disabled,” this kind of recipe is right up my alley! More assembly than cooking. I’d leave that last saucepan bit (and maybe the broiler too) to my gourmand spouse, but this I could do – fooling myself and everyone else that I’m actually contributing something besides scintillating conversation. 😉
What is red-colored spice mix?
I raided the spice cabinet for something red and found a packet of paella spice which I mixed with some Mexican Tajin (lemon, salt, chile mix), under the ‘whatever’ approach to red-colored spice mix. Fingers crossed!
Hurray, this is totally in the Slow Cooker Odyssey spirit of Or Whatever! Keep us posted. Can’t wait to hear. Bon Appetit!
Carrington’s version used a mix of chipotle chili and paprika. When I roasted mine, I used sweet paprika only as I didn’t want to spice it up too much. If you’re going to do the broiling step, I don’t think you need to do the reddish brown spices.
OK now you’ve made me hungry. My only worry is that I will pick the wrong red rub and screw it up.
Kay is right: You can leave the red spice off if you broil. But sometimes people are using a slow cooker in the first place because there’s no oven/broiler available, in which case, a spice rub can add a little cheerful color to the skin.
This sauce should work with pork too. Wish this was posted yesterday , it would have made the leftover pork I’m eating for my paleo breakfast more exciting.
Absolutely. We do a similar pan sauce with pork tenderloin, using scrapings from the cast-iron skillet. (I’ve learned to conceal the jar of fruit preserves in the process, because my kids think it’s weird for breakfast jelly to go into dinner meat. They don’t know the half of it….)
I’m not a writer but quiet time in forest setting with like minded people, books, knitting, good food and wine is all very appealing.
Rivendell Writers Colony, on a bluff about 1.5 hours from Nashville, is my happy place. Even the website makes me feel peaceful. Check out rivendellwriterscolony.org
I’m grabbing my favorite handknit wraps & heading to our local butcher for a chicken worthy of our dinner tonight!
Sounds delish.. And I gotta try this – But no liquid is added to the chicken for cooking?
Correct. There is no liquid added. You will be astonished by the amount of liquid produced for you to make the sauce. Also, it’s helpful to put lots of potatoes etc. in the bottom, to lift the bird out of the liquid.
I read this early today, but didn’t have time to comment until now. What a treat! Graceful, witty writing and a fabulous recipe! Perfect start to my day. Thanks.
I have two slow-cooker-size chickens in the freezer, which had been awaiting an uncertain fate. One that almost certainly involved something way more elaborate than I actually have time for these days. Now, their path is clear!
I don’t know why it never occurred to me to slow-cooker ’em, but I think I have been in thrall to a serious category error and was imagining that a slow-cooker-ed chicken would be akin to a boiled one. Now that I actually think about it, I have no way to justify this assumption.
Can’t wait for the next stop on the Odyssey. Thank you so much, especially for O-scale potatoes.
Love the slow cooker meals and this sounds delicious. When I do a chicken I take a few minutes and toss it first into a frying pan on high, turning it all around quickly-this browns the skin up front.
Everything about this post makes me happy – can’t wait to dust off my slow cooker!
I loved “needling out narrative knots.” Graceful, witty writing indeed!
As much as I love to cook, this will be wonderful to come home to. Thanks, Carrington