The Genius Way To Make Crispy Chicken In The Slow Cooker

Just when you think the humble slow cooker has divulged all of its secrets, another nifty little trick reveals itself. Not only does a slow cooker add massive convenience to all kinds of chicken crockpot recipes for stews, soups, or succulent pull-apart meat that loves to bathe in its own juices, but it can even produce tender chicken with beautifully crispy skin without the extra step of a pan sear. Bad news for the air fryer, there's a new king of crisp.

Envisioning your slow cooker as a miniature mashup of oven and roasting dish helps to frame how this method works to produce crispy-skinned yet juicy chicken. Much of the usual advice for making chicken in the slow cooker centers around meat simmering in a liquid bath of sauce, gravy, or broth, or focuses on an array of accompanying liquid ingredients. For getting lusciously juicy chicken with wonderfully browned skin, however, adding no extra liquid is — ironically — the secret sauce.

Chicken has plenty of juices locked up in the meat. Taking your time to cook it slowly allows them to render out and sustain moisture among the meat fibers, rather than needing to add liquids to the slow cooker. While adding ingredients like sauces, wine, gravy, or even fresh vegetables that release steam do add flavour, they also keep chicken skin moist and prevent that beautiful Maillard reaction from turning the skin brown and caramelising its proteins.

Opting for chicken breast can result in meat that turns out dry. Reach instead for bone-in, skin-on thighs, better suited to slow cooking as they have more fat and connective tissue to render out and keep the meat moist. These rendered juices double as a plate-ready, flavor-loaded jus.

While you want to keep moisture within the meat, a dry surface will give you that crust you usually get in the oven. Patting the chicken skin dry, seasoning it well with salt, and even leaving it exposed in the fridge for a few hours (or overnight if you can) to reduce excess moisture is a proven hot tip for getting your chicken skin shatteringly crisp. Once you've removed additional moisture, apply whatever spice mix, dry rub, or seasoning you like. Just make sure that there isn't too much salt in any premixed seasonings to avoid double-salting and overdoing it. All kinds of flavors work, including French herbs, Jamaican jerk, or anything else from Indian spices to Mexican to a traditional BBQ seasoning like our 3-ingredient dry rub; the decision is yours.

Your chicken should be done after four to five hours on low, but really what you're looking for is that nicely browned skin. An internal temperature of at least 165 degrees Fahrenheit is the food safety seal-of-approval that your chicken is ready to serve. Just don't lift that lid while it's cooking, as you don't want to release any heat or jeopardize the moisture equilibrium you created.