Chicken WOGs in the crock pot or the burly pot - A multitude of meals

I know many of you Crossfitters see 'WOG' and think 'WOD', but no...WOG is a term my husband and I use. He works for a food delivery service that offers whole chickens 'without giblets' as an option. On his manifest, and on the package, it simply says 'Whole Chicken WOG'.

Burly pot is a term my mother-in-law introduced to me. She bought me a HUGE cast iron cook pot in our favourite colour for the kitchen - RED. She calls it a burly pot because you have to be pretty burly to be able to heft it around the kitchen. I love this pot. It's a little bigger than I would normally use, but it has a lot of sentimental value, and all-in-all, it's a wonderful pot.

With summer on the horizon, we do a lot of make-ahead large recipes, so when we are too busy biking, hiking, gardening or just laying out in the sun catching up on our reading, we have some tasty meals ready to assemble in the fridge.

Last night and this morning was another cooking frenzy. I prepped a kale salad, made breakfast bites (recipe to follow), oven baked some whole sweet potatoes and made a WOG in the burly pot. I chose the burly pot over the crock pot because by the time I got home and prepped the chicken, it was almost 7 and I wanted to go to bed before midnight ;-) Which cooking method I use largely depends on how much time I have, but they usually net very similar results.  The crockpot is more forgiving with time - you can be an hour late home from work and not ruin the dish - but the burly pot lends a slightly more 'roasted' flavour.

WOGs are so quick and easy. This method I use to utilizing as much of a whole chicken as possible  may seem daunting, but it's really just 3 or 4 processing steps that each take about 5 minutes. They just have to be spaced accordingly, but it is possible to slip an extra 5 minutes in the kitchen into your evening and morning routines and have a regular supply of home cooked chicken to last for at least 3 meals each week.

Step 0: In Case of Frozen WOG, add this step to the timing of your recipe.

The first step for you may be thawing the chicken, which adds an extra day to your planning process. I usually cheat and put my wog in a large bowl of cold water, changing water every 30 minutes or so until it feels 'wiggly', meaning I can move it around enough to scoop out any ice chunks in the cavity.

Step One: Seasoning and cooking the WOG.

This is usually the least time consuming part of this whole process. I rinse the chicken and pat it dry. Then I either rub a spice mix on it and just toss it in the crock, or sometimes I slather it with salsa and stuff it with a quartered onion. Last night, I used a few handfulls of my saved veg scraps that I keep in the freezer, a green apple, some chunks of lemon and Trader Joe's Everyday seasoning. Whatever the flavour I'm trying to achieve, I tend to follow the same pattern I've laid out below. I cook according to the directions for the method used. For the crockpot, I cook on high for 4-5 hours and on low 8-10 hours. For the burly pot I cook on 275 for a few hours or on 350 for about an hour and a half - until my thermometer says 175-180.

Step Two: Disassembling your WOG

Once it's done cooking, I take the lid off and let it sit for just a few minutes. Then I pull the whole chicken out to cool on a plate and leave all the veg and broth in the pot. If we are eating some of it hot for dinner that night, we'll slice those pieces off and let the rest cool to room temp while we enjoy our meal. I'm sure the health and safety police would insist it go directly into the refrigerator to cool, but besides the fact that it is difficult to work with when it's cold, it loses some of the flavour and gets soggy instead of juicy (don't ask me to explain the difference, just trust me: there is).

Once it's cool enough to handle, I pull all the meat off the bones - as much as possible, but not being vigilant about it. I leave the tendons, bones and skin on the plate and put the meat in a glass container with a lock-tight lid and put it in the fridge for other recipes.


Step Three: Making Stock

What's left on the plate is put back in the pot and the pot is filled with cold water. At this point I may or may not add spice. If I do, I prefer dried spice, as it lends more flavour with lengthy cooking time like making stock. I then put the lid on, turn the heat down to as low as possible (my crockpot has a 'keep warm' setting, and I use a heat diffuser on my gas stove) and let it go. I've done it for as little as 30 minutes (at a medium setting) or as long as 10 hours (that was on the lowest setting -170- in the oven, or in the crockpot on keep warm). Once you're ready to move on, turn the heat off, take the lid off and let it cool.

A thought about letting it cool: if you let it just cool to 'working temperature' you will have more fat in your stock than if you let it cool completely (or put it in the refrigerator to cool). If you wait until it's completely cold, the fat will rise to the top and coagulate, sticking to the debris in the collander when you strain it. Plan according to the results you want.

Step Four: Storing Stock

Once your pot has cooled enough for your purposes, grab a compost or garbage can, a big collander and another big pot or bowl. Scoop as much of the bones and debris out of the pot with a slotted spoon and toss it in the can.

I used to just use the collander and then try to pick out the last bits of meat from the debris, but I gave that up. The meat didn't have much flavour and probably had most of the nutrition boiled out of it anyway. I figured all the good stuff was all in the stock, so I quit saving the boiled meat.

Once you have most of the big chunks out, put the collander in/over the big bowl and pour the liquid in. Toss what's in the collander in the can. You now have a big bowl of chicken stock. I either pour mine in quart jars and put them in the fridge, or pour it in gallon bags and freeze them. It all depends on how much stock is in my fridge and what time of year it is. I go through a lot more stock in the winter than the summer, but I eat chicken pretty much year round.