“Rotisserie” Chicken

I love using rotisserie chicken for quick and easy meals or in recipes like my Cheaters Chicken Soup, my Oriental Chicken Salad and my Fire Roasted Tomato and Chicken Tortilla Soup.  This recipe is super simple to make and works just as well on whole chickens as it does on pieces.  What you end up with is chicken that has a gorgeous crispy skin and the texture of the meat is fall off the bone soft but still moist and juicy.  I’m telling you, this chicken is exactly like the rotisserie chickens you purchase at the market except better because it’s not injected with things like sodium phosphate, modified food starch, sugar, carrageenan, soy lecithin, flavorings or xanthan gum.  The only long part about this recipe is that the chicken is roasted at a low temp for five hours, yes you read that correctly, five hours. 

So since I have to plan my time accordingly and have the oven going for so long, when I make this I go big generally roasting two whole chickens along with ten pounds of leg quarters in one go (doubling the spice recipe below.)  Also, I always roast my poultry dark meat up because I feel that by doing so during the cooking process the extra fat from the dark meat runs down and through the white meat helping to keep it moist and from drying out.

Once the chicken is finished cooking I allow it to cool so that it’s easier to handle and then I get to work.  I remove all the skin to one bowl, I separate the dark and light meats and set those aside and then I take all the bones, fat and cartilage and that goes in another bowl.  Nothing at this point gets thrown away.  Some of the chicken we eat right away or I use in another recipe and some is frozen for use later.  The skin I add to a stock pot and then I add my pasta strainer and fill that with all the stuff in the bones bowl and all the drippings and fat from the roasting pan.  I then add water and the additional items needed to make Cheaters Chicken Soup.  Once the soup is ready I pull the pasta strainer, press on the solids to get out all the broth and dispose of everything in the strainer.  I then strain the skin from the soup and put the broth in the refrigerator to chill so that I can easily remove the fat layer.  Once the soup has chilled I easily remove the fat layer to a container and I freeze the fat as it is delicious used in other recipes like oven roasted potato wedges or when making pâté.  The skin I take and because it’s so soft I easily rip it into pieces and then in a large fry pan over low heat I render the remaining fat from the skin cooking it until the skin is crispy and golden, delicious little bits of chicken crackling which is delicious sprinkled onto a bowl of hot soup…trust me on this one and give it a try. 

So much to do with “Rotisserie” Chicken and so very delicious too.  I hope that you’ll give this recipe a try and you’ll never go back to store bought rotisserie chickens again.

“Rotisserie” Chicken

4 tsp. salt
2 tsp. sweet paprika 
1 TBS. garlic powder 
1 tsp. dried thyme 
2 tsp. fresh ground pepper
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper 
10 lbs. chicken ~ whole “fryer” chickens, leg quarters or pieces of your choice

Preheat oven to 250F.  In a small bowl mix together all the spices. Rinse the chicken and pat dry with paper towel.  Sprinkle the spice mixture inside, outside and all over the chicken. Place the chicken in a foil lined pan (it makes clean up so much easier) and roast uncovered for 5 hours.  During the last two hours of cooking, baste the chicken with the pan juices every 15-20 minutes.

Enjoy!