What’s Cooking Tuesday
Today I am making a whole chicken in the slow cooker. You of course do not get nice crisp skin like you can when you oven roast it, but you get really tender chicken without having to brine it. What I do is slice a medium onion into rings and layer then on the bottom of the slow cooker. In my mini food processor, I blend together 3 garlic cloves, ½ tablespoon dried rosemary, ½ tablespoon black pepper, ½ tablespoon sea salt, 1 tablespoon onion powder, 4 tablespoons softened butter, and 2 Tbsp agave nectar (or honey). I take the resulting paste and rub it all over a 3 lb chicken–including slicing under the skin over the breast so I can rub some between the skin and meat–and place that in the slow cooker on top of the onions. Then I toss in some baby bella sliced mushrooms and cook that on low all day.
ETA: I doubled the butter mixture. I spoon out what I need for the chicken and I wrap up the rest and put it back in the fridge. That way I have flavored butter on hand for future cooking. I also use unsalted butter, so if the butter is salted adjust added salt accordingly.
For the sides, I’m going to roast some veges and potatoes–a mixture of probably onion, garlic, sweet potatoes, turnip, red potatoes and maybe carrot along with some herbs. I have spinach that I need to use, but I may just throw a salad together at lunch. I could make creamed spinach too I suppose.
Non cooking related, I have yet another new polish. This was a hand-over from a friend who didn’t like the color. I love it. It is black, sort of. There is enough purple and gold mixed in that you can tell in certain light that it is a deep purple and in other light it looks like a deep brown. And it is super shiny. It has a lot more character than my other bottle of black which is just, well, black.
