Jim Liddell's Five Lives Clam-Chowder Chicken\
(Added notes for following recipe)
The oven cooking time will be about 10-15 minutes. Not a half hour.
Line the bottom of the crockpot with potato slices to prevent sticking. The taters are delicious too, at the end. seal the pot's lid with a few drops of olive oil after putting it onto the pot.
DON"T cut the thighs and wings separately. Instead very carefully jab the spoon though the membrane at the hip and shoulder joints. It's there and a bit toughy to break through. This will allow you to have ONLY the two breast openings and you can massage the under-skin packing into the legs and wings as a result without cutting new slits. If you are extra careful, you can get the spoon down into the limbs as well ahead of packing and loosen the skin there as well.
Finally, liberally coat the skin with olive oil before putting in the oven. Can you get Bertolli extra virgin olive oil? Wow!
And you can stuff the cavity with a 1.5 pound pork roast before putting in the crockpot. Yeah, let the ribs crack a bit while you are forcing it in, AND you can stuff celery sticks in around the roast so that the juices flow out. Celery is another bonus eatable from all this too! And you cannot imagine the natural gray the pork continues to outflow during the entire process. And the roast at the end. Incredible as is, unbelievably tender and so sweet. Or, put it back in the oven while the chicken is cooling and get it browny as well. (You have to let the chicken cool because you otherwise don't have a knife sharp enough to cut it. Razor blades? Huh, may be a good substitute for a knife.)
Oh, and blockade your kitchen door while everything is cooling. You cannot imagine the aroma that chick throws off. People will try to come in and lick the chicken if you don't!
The Original Recipe
A chicken gains five different table-lives with this recipe created by James Wallace Liddell in Carrollton, Ga. in a moment of bachelor inspiration during a recent misty, cool and still Saturday, just as would have been experienced long ago during a Liddesdale spring.
You will need a two-quart crock pot pre-heated to low, insulated cooking gloves, a 9x12 deep-casserole dish, a one-quart steel or ceramic bowl, a sharp paring knife and a tablespoon, and, later, a broiler oven pre-heated to 400 degrees. The ingredients are: one 4 to 4.5-lb. fryer chicken (less fat, you know), a three-quarter cup of dried mashed-potato mix, one can of condensed clam chowder and two tablespoons of cooking oil (olive oil is nice).
Wash the chicken in warm water and shake dry. Reserve the gibbets, liver, neck and whatever else the meat packer left inside the chicken and put these in the refrigerator. Place the chicken breast-up in a clean sink. Slit the skin very close to and on either side of the breast bone so there are about 1.5-inch openings at the highest point of the chicken. Make 1-inch slits at the top of the drumsticks and meatiest part of the wings. Insert the spoon into these openings and carefully work the skin loose from the meat all over, including the down-arch of the back. Leave the back whole. --DON'T TEAR OR PUNCTURE THE SKIN and DON'T BREAK THROUGH THE LAST INCH OF SKIN-MEAT CONTACT ABOVE THE CAVITY!
Carefully spoon the undiluted clam chowder into the slits starting with the breast, then the legs and finally the wings. Yes, put the diced potato bits in as well. Massage the chowder around so that every corner of each pocket between skin and meat is filled full. Take the remaining chowder and rub the skin with it. If any chowder is left, spoon it into the chicken's cavity and spread it around. Spread the oil all over the interior surface of the crock pot. Place the packed chicken in the crock pot and cover. Dripple a little oil along the edge of the cover to seal it. Wash your sink at this point. Cook for six hours, opening the pot only once at about three hours to drain the accumulated liquid into the steel bowl. At this point, be sure that the back of the chicken hasn't stuck to the crock pot floor. If it has, work it free very carefully with your fingers in the insulated gloves. Harvest all liquid and set aside to cool. (While cooling, the yellow chicken fat will rise to the top.)
During the fifth hour, take the reserved sweetmeats and neck from the refrigerator, strip and cut the meat off the neck and dice everything to the size of rice grains. Put three tablespoons of the chicken fat skim from the bowl into a 200- to 250-degree iron skillet and melt until just bubbly. Add the diced meat and stripped neck-bones and fry, stirring constantly until you smell the gibbets and they have turned a nice brown. Add a cup of water to the skillet and stir. While keeping an eye on the skillet to insure that it doesn't go dry on you--add small dashes of water and stir quickly to prevent this--remove the neck bones, don the gloves, peel any remaining meat off them, discard bones and return neck-meat harvest to the skillet. Then add all remaining reserved crock-pot liquids, the dried potato mix (stir diligently to get it dissolved well), and begin stirring the skillet's contents at just past boiling with the intention of eventually reducing this by one-half in volume. Be wary to scrape sides of the skillet where a brownish skim will constantly build up during the reduction. Stir skim back into the gravy as it is making.
At the sixth hour, the chicken is done and cooked so tender that it will fall apart if it isn't handled extremely carefully. Clue! When done, the chicken will be a pasty white all over and smell delicious. Don the insulated gloves again, work your fingers around and under the chicken to loosen it and lift--very carefully--out of the crock pot and place in the casserole dish. (Don't use the dish's cover during the next step. And fill your crock pot with hot soapy water to soak. It will clean later with a single swipe and a rinsing.)
Place the chicken in the casserole dish in the pre-heated oven and broil for up to one-half hour or until you smell a wonderful aroma and the skin is golden and beginning to crisp. Remove and let cool to the point that it is no longer steaming before carving. The gravy should be the right consistency at this point, so serve it all to yourself and your guests, who will be standing around your kitchen just smelling and grinning, and then thoroughly enjoy the food and the thanks! Forget the wines--cold tumblers of well-chilled apple juice go great with this dish. Steamed asparagus spears? Yes! Cold garden salad? Yes! A halved tomato with mayonnaise? Yes! A hearty home-baked white bread with a bowl of melted real butter? Yes!
And finish the feast with a dessert of chilled and very tart key lime pie and a tumbler of Juanita Liddell's Magical Iced Tea to send those happy folks back to their feuds, raids and the defense of Liddesdale.
Later--if your guests haven't finished the chicken or if you dined alone--you can use the gravy and a bit of cooking oil to fry bits and pieces of the chicken as a meat entree for your next meals and as sandwich filler. That's three lives for the chicken so far. The meaty bones and scraps can be added to a can of condensed tomato, mushroom or cream-of-chicken soup, along with some rice or pearled barley, to get something Mr. Campbell will never can for you. That's four lives for that long-suffering chicken.
Finally, if you have kept the bones, these can be cracked, slow-fried in butter to gain the remaining flavor, then strained--with splintered bones discarded--then mix this mashy substance with the rest of the gravy and freeze in small pgks for later use as a favoring in other dishes, especially vegetables or fried grits cakes.
And that is the chicken's fifth life on your table.
Enjoy!