Last year I learned that making balls of foil for a whole chicken to sit on in the crockpot helps the chicken be more “roast” like and less falling apart. I like the convenience of the crockpot, but I really like making whole chickens, but had been unhappy with the way they came out before learning this trick.

Today I put the whole chicken on the foil balls, rubbed it with a bit of butter, squeezed a lemon onto it, then sprinkled with salt, pepper, thyme, and paprika, as well as some fresh parsley. Covered it up and cooked it on high for about 6 hours.

Postscript: I ended up pulling this out of the crockpot and roasting it at 400 for about 10 minutes to get the skin crisp. It was quite good!