Happy Birthday Spring Chicken!

For a birthday lunch today, I used my slow cooker to cook a whole chicken flavoured with lemon, sage, thyme and garlic. While I finished cooking the chicken in the oven together with some roast veggies to brown and crisp it, using the slow cooker made the chicken very tender and juicy. I also served the chicken with some char grilled spring vegetables - asparagus, zucchini and baby eggplants - as well as some vegetarian stuffed tomatoes. It felt like a spring banquet! Here's how I made the chicken ...

I used a free range chicken and, after washing and preparing it, I stuffed it with a generous bunch of sage from my herb pot, some thyme, a clove of garlic and a whole lemon that I had pricked with a fork. I had partially cooked some potatoes and sliced one of the larger potatoes and layered that in the bottom of the pre-heated slow cooker. I seasoned the potatoes and then put in the whole chicken that I had lightly browned in a pan with just a little butter and some more sage. The chicken and potatoes were in the slow cooker on low for five hours.

When the chicken was about an hour from being finished, I put a baking tray of veggies in the oven. I roasted the rest of the potatoes I'd prepared (if you have a bigger slow cooker you might be able to fit them all in), some carrots, chunks of Spanish onion and some purple carrots (purple is actually the original colour of carrots!). I seasoned the vegetables with some lemon infused olive oil, garlic cloves, salt, pepper and thyme.

When the chicken was ready to remove from the slow cooker, I put the chicken and potatoes in the baking tray with the roasted and vegetables for about half an hour and the chicken became beautifully golden.

The slow cooked chicken produced some beautiful juices as well, which I used to make a sauce to serve with lunch.

To serve the meal, I carved the chicken and placed it on a platter with the roasted vegetables and some fresh sprigs of thyme.

I was pretty happy with how it turned out, and I think it's best to finish the chicken in the oven to give it some nice colour. I will definitely be doing this again. Enjoy!