Slow cooker chicken with garlic parsley butter

We all have our own rituals to prepare for the holidays. So this week I'm not only decorating the house and baking cookies, I'm doing my best to cook down the contents of a freezer to make room for said cookies. Thus the reason this four-pounder from Hilltop Pastures came out to play.

Chicken with escargot butter

Adapted from “The French Slow Cooker” by Michele Scicolone The premise of this recipe is that the tasty butter that snails are usually found swimming in on the French plate might as well not be reserved just for snails.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons butter, softened

½ cup finely chopped parsley

2 tablespoons minced shallot

1 garlic clove, finely chopped

1 whole chicken, about 4 pounds, giblets reserved for another use

Method

Mix butter, parsley, shallot and garlic. Remove any giblets from chicken. Rinse and pat dry. Sprinkle inside and out with salt and pepper. Peel back an opening in the skin on breasts and legs. Spread as much of the garlic mixture as you can under the skin. Place some inside the cavity and rub the rest liberally over the outside of the bird. Cook chicken in a large slow cooker for 6 hours on low, or until chicken is tender and it registers at least 165 on thick part of the thigh. Serve drizzled with pan juices.

Rating: Utterly simple comfort food, with the large bird falling-apart tender. Serve with something that slurps up the sauce. Like most chickens cooked in the slow cooker, it picks up only a slight brown cast, so it might not be deemed company-ready. But it was a great thing to have slowly filling up the house with the smell of supper while I decked the halls accompanied by Pandora's Indie holiday channel.