Roast your bird for shredded sandwiches - easy cooking, good eating

Ok, so this week I was hankering for a roast chicken. Lots of Yetis like roast chickens, with some nice new potatoes, and some roasted asparagus... A nice plump chicken with a slightly golden brown herbed skin, with maybe a sliced lemon put inside for some nice tartness and additional taste. Mmm, that would be good. The snowdogs always drool and ask for some when I make a roast chicken. Snowdogs don't get any though.

However, since I have not made roast chicken in a while, but I have made barbecue duck sandwiches, I think I would share a technique for making pulled poultry that can then be mixed with your favorite barbecue sauce for amazing sandwiches. Or for anything else (tamales, enchiladas, quiche, tossed with pasta, confit, etc.) that you can think of. Also I think this recipe is easier to post tonight anyways. Yetis can be lazy.

Generic pulled poultry (duck, chicken, hens, etc.)

1 bird of your choice, not frozen. I am assuming a 5-6 lb bird for this preparation, you may need to increase your time with a larger piece of meat.
1 deep roasting pan
1 roasting rack that will hold your bird of choice
salt
pepper
1 onion
1 carrot
2 stalks of celery

Preheat your oven for 200F. Not any hotter than 220F. Check this with a thermometer as if your oven is too hot it will make the bird very dry.

Cut up your onion into large chunks, about 1 inch or so. You don't have to peel the onion. Also cut up the carrot and celery into similarly sized pieces. Place the vegetables in the bottom of the roasting pan. Clean your bird and pat it dry. Season the inside and outside of the bird with salt and pepper. You can be pretty liberal with the pepper, but just use a little salt. You don't want the bird to really dry out. Truss your bird if you want, but since you won't be serving it whole and you'll be cooking it for a long time trussing really doesn't do too much. I usually don't bother trussing for this preparation.

Put your bird on the roasting rack, put the roasting rack in the pan, and put your bird in the oven. You'll be roasting the bird at 200 to 220 F for about 6 hours, or for those of you who are totally addicted to internal temperature, until the internal temperature of the bird has been 180F or higher for at least 2 hours. It may reach 200F.

When the time is up, take the roasting pan out of the oven and allow the bird to cool. If you want, you can reserve the drippings for a nice sauce or stock or broth later.

Once the bird of your choice has cooled, carefully remove the bird from the roasting rack. The bird may fall apart a bit. This is OK since you'll be shredding the meat anyways.

Remove and discard the skin. Remove the meat from the carcass (save this for some nice broth if you want) and place in a bowl. Shred the meat by hand or with two forks. You can then heat the meat with some barbecue sauce, or do whatever you want with it. Chicken salad is always good with some nice diced fresh celery, or in a pot pie, or all those other suggestions I put at the beginning of this post.

Enjoy!

This serves about 1 Yeti to 1 bird, or 4 people per bird if served as pulled poultry barbecue sandwiches, etc. You can figure the usual proportions of people per bird yourself.

Maybe I'll post my barbecue sauce sometime. That has a lot of ingredients though.