Answering Questions- Roast Chicken in the Crock-pot and Apple Butter

There have been some good questions about the roast chicken in the crock-pot and the apple butter and so I thought I'd answer them here for everyone's benefit.


Do you add the veggies in the a.m., too? Or do they go in later in the day? It depends on your crock-pot and the size of your veggies. I know that in my big crock-pot a whole potato can cook on low all day so I go ahead and throw in the whole potatoes in the morning with the chicken and then I cut fairly large carrots only in half and put them in as well. But if I'm doing quartered potatoes and smaller cuts of carrots then I add them at noon. If your slow cooker doesn't cook very fast then you for sure want to throw them on top in the morning. The ease of using a crock-pot for me is being able to throw it all in first thing in the morning and not tending to it the rest of the day so for that reason I put my veggies in whole or almost whole so that they can be in there all day.

Do you put the veggies on top of the chicken? Yes. I put the chicken in first, breast side down. Next I sprinkle with herbs and seasonings. Then I add the potatoes, carrots, celery, and onion and sprinkle again so that the veggies get some seasonings as well. Putting the veggies on top helps them cook slower. Apply these same methods when cooking a red meat roast.

After you put the apple butter into jars, do you freeze them? What are some ideas of how you use your apple butter? Yes, I do freeze them but you could can them for storage on your pantry shelf if you wanted to. If freezing them, be sure to leave about a 2 inch space at the top for expansion. I forgot to do that the other day and had two ruptured jars in my deep freeze. Oops. We love apple butter as baby food, on toast, bagels, English muffins, with scones, pastries, as an ice cream topping, in recipes that call for applesauce instead of oil, served over cottage cheese, served over yogurt, and spread on a graham cracker or cookie. It can also be used as a cookie filling, a pastry filling, a tart filling, etc. Anything you use jam for you can use apple butter for.