*rimshot*
Well, let me update on that crockpot chicken experimentin' I was up to last week. About 6 hours in, I checked the internal temp with my newish super basic meat thermometer that Santa stuffed in my stocking (because my fancy-schmancy-digital-timer-meat-therometer-alarm-glow-in-the-dark-ipod-ready-flying-car contraption NEVER WORKS) and all was good on the chicken doneness scale. It was crazy juicy and looked pretty tasty at this point. Enter Danielle. I managed to dry that sucker out before it got to the table. So, like a good little scientist, I compiled my data and set out to come up with why my results (figure A) didn't match my expected outcome per my hypothesis, which was "if I follow a recipe, i will have moist chicken."
Figure A
Possible explanations for results:
- I poked the chicken with a meat thermometer, thus releasing all the juices.
- I crocked that bird too long
- I left it under the broiler (to crisp the skin, as per the recipe) for too long because i was too busy making gravy out of ALL the dripping is the crockpot.
Okay, here's why this is all messing with my head. Chicken Poking. How am I to know if it needs to stay in the crockpot and continue to cook if I don't check the internal temp? I can't let it rest for 20 minutes or so, then poke, then find it's undercooked, then re-crock, can I? So, there's that. Crocked the bird too long. Well, the recipe said 4-8 hours depending on the size of the bird. That's big range guys. I wasn't really sure, so I stuck with mid-way though at 6 hours. It may have been done at 4 hours, but I didn't check as the chicken poking would have been an issue there too. Broiler. Hmmm. I maybe added insult to dry chicken injury here, but like I said, I was making gravy out of all the drippings in the crock pot. Seriously. It was like over a 1.5 cups of drip. Doesn't that mean that the bird was already dry at this point? Ponder.
Nonetheless, it was still really tasty. It wasn't, like, crazy dry but I was shooting for crazy moist, so it wasn't dead on. The gravy was awesome, so I didn't mind drenching everything in that business. Didn't mind one bit.
I'm still going to give this a go again. The recipe is dead-on. I need to get on with the deadness next time.
The Crock Testin' continues!
In other news, I found some finger limes at the farmers market on Saturday and they are pretty sweet. They have a really weird texture. You don't slice them, you scoop the insides out with a little spoon and then sprinkle the little lime pearls on stuff. Of course we added them to beer because we're classy like that. The lime flavor itself is lime-y. Duh. But it also tastes kind of floral, like lime blossoms. Sort of herbal maybe. Like the lime rind is part of the flavor. Really good. I'm actually pretty obsessed. I like to cut them open and play the little pearly lime parts. Look for 'em. Play with 'em. Report back. You might want to take a lime loan though, since these babies are like 14 bucks a pint! Actually, that's the cheap price. I saw them on GILT taste and they were something like 30 for pint!!?! Limes! I feel like Amy in Little Women when the cool kids trade limes for stuff. Some sexist man teacher needs to smack the back of my hand quick before I spend Carter's college fund on limes.
I posted a pic on my Twitter (@yelladoesstuff) so jump over and look. I should link to something here, but I've got to go play with limes.
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