Clever culinary Jellies, how can I cook a whole chicken on the stove top?

Use a crock pot! Here’s a recipe :)

Well, you could cut up the chicken and cook it a la Country Captain or you could fry it.

To cook it whole, you would have to steam it or stew it.

If you have a dutch oven, you could brown the chicken by turning it, then cover and steam it. Cut up would really be the way to go, though.

Or boil, to make soup, then take the meat off the bone and use it for other dishes.

This calls out for chicken and buscuits. Cook the chicken in enough water to cover until the meat is falling off the bones. Remove the chicken and set aside. Make a gravy with the liquid, seasoning as necessary, and serve over the buscuits. Brown the remaining chicken and serve as an entree or shred the chicken anfd throw it back in the gravy. I like it either way.

Do you have a grill? People forget you can grill in the winter. . . :)

Like @Taciturnu, I would get out the grill, stand the chicken over an open can of beer or coke and let it cook until it is done.

No grill, no crock pot, but I never thought of steaming in a stock pot. I need to figure out whether to replace or repair the stove. What a pain. Thanks for the ideas, guys.

Chicken soup; submerge a chicken in a large stock pot; cover with water; add chopped celery, onions, carrots, parsnip…simmer for several hours…until all flavor leaves the chicken and enters the water.

Remove chicken and shred meat. Put meat back in broth.

Fiddle. Seasoning, rice or fine noodles or barley.

How about chicken and dumplings? This is one of my all-time favorite recipes.

First, you have to cut that chicken into 8 pieces. Legs, thighs, wings, breasts. Don’t discard the rest of the carcass, but use it to make stock.

Put the bones you don’t need into a big pot. Cover them with water and throw in a bit of cut up onion, carrots, celery, and garlic. If you don’t have all of those, just use what you have. Add a bay leaf and whatever seasonings you want. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for a couple of hours. Strain the liquid, discard the bones and veggies, and let it cool so you can skim the fat off the top. Save this to use for the recipe. Or just use canned broth if you don’t have time to mess with stock, but freeze the bones to make stock another time!

OK, for the recipe you need:
1 chicken (3–4 pounds) cut up
1 tsp paprika
½ tsp salt
black pepper to taste
1 tbsp veg. oil
1 rib celery, cut into 2 inch pieces
1 carrot, peeled and cut into 2 inch pieces
2 leeks (white part and 1 inch green), well rinsed and cut into 1 inch pieces
1 small onion, quartered
4 cups chicken stock or canned broth

For the dumplings:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1½ tsp baking powder
black pepper to taste
2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
2 tbsp solid vegetable shortening
⅓ cup milk

Rinse the chicken pieces well, and pat them dry. Combine the paprika, salt, and pepper in a small bowl and rub this mixture onto the chicken.

Heat the oil in a dutch oven and cook the chicken over high heat until browned, about 10 minutes. Pour off the fat from the pan.

Add the vegetables and stock to the chicken and bring to a boil. Lower the heat, cover, and simmer just until the chicken is tender and cooked through, about 45 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the chicken and vegetables to a platter and keep warm. Reserve the broth in the pot.

Make the dumplings: In a mixing bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, pepper and 2 tbsp parsley. Using a pastry blender, two knives, or your fingertips, cut in the shortening until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Then add the milk, stirring just until the mixture is moistened. Gather the dough into a ball, knead it once or twice, and cut it into 12 pieces.

Bring the broth to a simmer and drop the dumplings into it. Cover and simmer until they are puffed and cooked through, about 15 minutes.

To serve, arrange the chicken, vegetables, and dumplings in four shallow bowls. Ladle some broth into each bowl and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

So yummy. The only problem I have is that the dumplings never turn out right for me. I have much better luck using this dumpling recipe.

Easy. Clean the chicken and cover it with herbs. Sit it in a big dutch oven on some sort of rack (if you don’t have a rack it’s no biggie). Add about ½ cup water to the bottom of the pan. Turn the burner on low, cover it, and just let it cook on low heat for a couple of hours. It’s really better than using the oven as it will be very moist—very similar to doing in a crock pot. The drippings can be used to make gravy.

Do you have a large stock pot, size enough to boil a batch of pasta in? Do you have another pot that would rest upside down over the top of that one, acting as a lid? Take a large soupcan, larger than a regular canned food item but smaller than the size pumpkin pie filling comes in. Open the can, dump out whatever is in there and fill it with water. Place it inside the deeper pot then “mount the chicken over it, up it’s hollowed out keister.. add vegies, broth or whatever around and set the pot on the stove for simmer heat. Cover with another pot so the sticking up part of the bird is covered but not squished down. The water/broth you poured in the can will heat and kind of percolate inside the bird as it slow cooks. If you’ve got a small plastic squirt bottle then you can put broth, melted butter, herbed oil mixed with wine and spray/baste the bird when you lift the lid now and then.

@Neizvestnaya ; I was wondering about that method…about how long? This sounds especially good as it steams from the inside as well…

@JilltheTooth: I simmered for about 2hrs because my chicken was a full size but I’d guess a little less for the ones they call “fryers”. I just poked it with a metal kebab skewer until it I saw no pinkish juices.

After this post I went and bought two chickens because I got a hankering just reading and reminicing back to when I had just a few cook pans/pots.

Well, oven or no (I still haven’t solved that dilemma,) I plan to try the steaming thing, sounds yummy. Thanks.

Of you have a large cast iron skillet (or two) or even regular fry pan and don’t want to cut it all up, you could butterfly it.

Just cut down on either side of the backbone and remove it. Split the keelbone and flatten the chicken with a couple of good whacks with the skillet.

Depending upon the diameter of the skillet(s) you can pan sear the whole chicken skin side down to begin or cut it into half lengthwise through the breastbone.

You can use a brick or two wrapped in tin foil to weight it down to get a good sear on the skin so the result is pretty close to what it would be broiling it.

Just look for recipes titled chicken under a brick. Delicious.

@Buttonstc One summer, I tried a chicken under a brick recipe on our grill three times. Each time the chicken caught on fire. My husband finally put his foot down and insisted I never try it again. I was so mad at that stupid recipe because it sounded so good but always burst into flames!

@MissAusten I’d like to ask how the chicken caught fire, but I’m a little scared of the answer.

OK, to be really technical the chicken probably didn’t actually burst into flames. But, something about that recipe and that method of cooking caused the flames in our gas grill to flare up and burn the chicken to a crisp. I tried adjusting it to so the chicken would cook properly without burning so badly, but had no luck. Each time we’d end up with a grill full of huge flames a cloud of black smoke pouring across the back yard. Normally I do pretty well with the grill, so I am blaming the recipe and not my cooking skills. :)