Too Hot to Roast a Chicken

My late garden is starting to catch up from the "Caprine Expeditionary Force" attacks earlier in the summer. The full moon passed with no additional silliness from the farm animals, which is not always the case

We have been plagued of late with raccoons. I know they are supposed to be cute, but I simply cannot see it after experiencing their late night rampages through the yard and the porches, their destruction in the greenhouse, and their attempts to get into the chicken coops. If you have ever seen the destruction when they do get into a coop I imagine you will agree.

But I digress (frequently and with gusto).

We have been blessed with an abundance of raspberries this year. As usual the wild black varieties continue to out perform the various domestic red, yellow, gold and purple we have tried over the years.

Katie's birthday is later this month, and she has never really wanted a cake. She has always picked a big pile of black raspberries (enough that we usually have plenty to freeze), and will request I make her a pie.

It has been HOT, and I am somewhat loathe to heat the kitchen any more than I have to. Lots of salads and charcuterie suppers, and crockpot meals. But with all of the raspberries, I really wanted a roasted chicken with raspberry sauce. I remembered I used to "roast" a whole chicken in a crock, and had kind of forgotten about it.

I decided to try again. I mixed our current favorite spice blend. It's called Mother Clucker - I know, I didn't name it that - but your favorite would probably work here too. I mashed it into so butter. We keep our butter on the table year round, so it is plenty soft right now. I loosened the skin on the breasts, thigh and legs and pushed the butter mixture underneath and rubbed it around as best I could. Then I smeared it around on the outside as well (OK, I had to make more because of poor planning). I made sure to get plenty of the butter on all of the outside surfaces, then I dusted it with my homemade garlic powder because, hey, garlic.

I cut a half dozen potatoes in half, rubbed them all over with olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic powder :) I put a bit of oil in the crock and put the potatoes cut side down. Sat the chicken on top of the potatoes, turned the crock on low for 6 or 8 hours.

When it was getting on toward supper time, I took a quart jar of raspberries and maybe a 1/4 cup of sugar and put them in a sauce pan stirred them up and let the sugar start to break down the berries. I could have done this sooner but... Anyway, I added 1/2 cup of Balsamic Vinegar and a small splash of coconut aminos (I try not to eat soy, but I suppose soy sauce would work). I brought the whole mess up to a low boil and kept mashing the berries and stirring until it got thick enough to suit me. I put it through a sieve into a little gravy boat thingie.

I cut the chicken apart (ok, it mostly fell apart, but I did chaperone it into a pleasing display on a big plate), I crisped the skin up a little with a torch (wife likes it that way) and drizzled some sauce over in as fancy a manner as I could. The potatoes still in the crock stuck a little, but I carefully loosened and placed them strategically around the same plate. Some lettuce and greens from the garden and the kitchen was still almost habitable.

Thanks for Listening,