I don't like to eat chicken on the bone. And I usually only get boneless skinless chicken breasts for cooking because there is minimal touching raw meat involved, but I tried one of those deli rotisserie chickens once and my family just LOVED it. For $5-$7 they are great when it's dinner time, and you have no dinner, and the only other option is stopping by McD's, but I discovered it's REALLY easy and cheap to cook your own chickens. (Ok, maybe I'm the last to figure this out, but if not, keep reading!) You can get those little 5lb chickens for $.57 a pound when they go on sale. You take your chicken, and scoop the "stuff" out of the inside and throw it away. (sorry if that's common knowledge, my mom had to tell me that part) Then rinse the chicken off and stick it in a big bowl. Sprinkle seasoning all over it- I use 1 1/2 TB Season-All, with 2tsp rosemary, and 3 tsp thyme leaves. Get the Reynolds Oven Bags-
throw in 2 TB flour and shake it up, then put your seasoned chicken in there and tie the bag shut. Place it in a casserole dish, and cook it! For 5lbs I do 80-90 minutes at 350. (For other cooking options, click
HERE.) It's the easiest, cheapest meal and my family loves it. If I pull the meat off the bones before I put it on my plate I can eat it just fine and it is good. We usually have plenty left over for one of those many recipes that call for "chopped cooked chicken" too.
In other food news, do you know what trans fat is? I know it's the bad fat of course, but today I realized it is shortening!
I have a lot of tubs of trans fat in my food storage- partially hydrogenated oil. Gross!
7 comments:
Hi Katie! What a great idea! My family likes those chickens as well! I'll have to try making my own now. Thanks! Sounds like the same as a turkey(I cook my Thanksgiving turkey in one of those large bags) but a lot smaller!
That does sound good. Except for the taking the stuff out of the middle part. You know what's good that doesn't involve removing stuff? Those frozen turkey breasts - you could probably cook it the same way. So is frying stuff in shortening worse than frying in oil? Cause the smell is a lot less offensive in shortening.
Huh. That oil vs. shortening question is a good one. Does anyone have an answer. I'm going to try to get myself to try this suggestion of making my own rotisserie chicken. They are really good.
Yea sorry, frying in shortening is as bad as cooking with it- the food soaks up the oil. I never noticed oil smelling bad when you fry, but I've never fried with shortening before!
i think i'll stick to just buying the already cooked whole chickens. while you made it sound easy, the scooping the stuff out part decided that for me. i am impressed though.
Whole chickens is the greatest discovery I've made within the last year, because my picky, picky husband will devour them. I'm totally with you though, I HATE bones and skin and touching raw meat. One way I do them is in the crockpot. I just crumple up a few balls of aluminum foil so it's off the bottom a little and then put it in, prepared the same way. It takes like 3-4 hours on high or 6-8 on low (real recipe is on allrecipes.com.) It's nice when you have to do dinner for someone but have 3000 other things to do that day. And it's so moist!
I love the rotisserie chicken too! mmmm. So many options. I have yet to cook one - although I've been wanting to - thanks again for a reminder!!
My mother-in-law has a GREAT recipe where you put a chicken on a soda pop can (lemon/lime) like 1/2 full or you could fill it w/ apple juice and cook it on the BBQ. IT IS SOOOO GOOD!!! Let me know if you're interested and I'll get it to you.
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