Before we start talking about dinner, I want to point out that little orange “Yum” button at the top of each post. Clicking that button for a particular post will save the recipe to Yummly, which is a cool recipe collation website. All of our recipes are there on our own Goodlicious publisher page. You can make an account on the site and it will save any recipes you’ve “yummed” into your own collection. Plus, it takes your “taste profile” into account when you search for new recipes, kind of like a personal shopper for dinner ideas. How cool is that? So, if you like a post on here, please feel free to click Yum, (and Pin, Like, Share, and Tweet!) to be able to find it again easily.
Now, what’s for dinner tonight? If you’re at my house, it might be leftover chicken …
Since I’ve been spending crazy hours at the hospital, Marion has been doing a lot more of the grocery shopping and, dare I say it, cooking. Often it’s fried eggs (I did mention he is an expert egg-fryer) or grilled cheese and tomato soup, but hey, it’s dinner, and that’s awesome. He’s also likes to get a rotisserie chicken for an easy dinner. He and the boys can just slice it up and eat it with a simple side, but I think that’s boring after a while. So, I started looking for different ways to use rotisserie chicken.
Yes, I know there are countless lists of “how to use rotisserie chicken.” So, why should you read this list? Because we’ve actually tried all of these recipes! Believe me, there were a few recipes that didn’t make the cut. In particular, there was one that used condensed soup and seemed like it would be super comfort-foody delicious. Let’s just say it sounded a lot better than it turned out.
So, if you have a lot of chicken – have you seen how big the rotisserie chickens from Costco are? – and are looking for a different way to serve it, try out one of these recipes.
1. Health Magazine’s Hoisin-Glazed Chicken is easy way to give your rotisserie chicken an Asian twist. We serve this with rice and veggies and the boys love it. We never have leftover leftovers when I make this.
2. Juli at PaleOMG has a fun twist on lasagna with her Creamy Rosemary Chicken Lasagna. My niece Tara sent me this recipe, and it’s great. You don’t have to use gluten-free noodles if you don’t want to, of course. BTW, Tara pointed out that a regular lasagna recipe uses a lot more cheese… guilt-free comfort food? I say Yes to that!
3. Speaking of comfort food, Cooking.com has a recipe for traditional Chicken Pot Pie that’s really good. Honestly, I was surprised because the recipe is pretty simple, just stock, salt, pepper, flour and milk, but the results are fabulous. We substituted frozen corn for the peas, and of course skipped the first step of cooking the chicken.
4. Of course there’s the old stand-by of chicken soup. Marion usually makes ours from memory, but this recipe for Chicken Soup with Rice from Epicurious is very similar. Note, if you don’t have any broth on hand, you can use water and a chicken boullion cube from your pantry. I suggest cooking the rice separately and adding it when you serve it unless you plan to eat all of the soup in one sitting. If you don’t, the rice may continue to expand and make the soup really sick.
I love Mexican food, and often turn leftovers into something resembling “south of the border” fare. Here are a few of my top choices these days:
5. Cooking Light’s Chicken and Black Bean-Stuffed Burritos is one of my favorites. I usually make them as quesadillas instead of burritos, but that’s really more semantics than actually changing the recipe. Oh, and I usually have cheddar cheese in the house, not Monterey Jack, so sometimes I’ll change that up too.
6. Alyssa at The Recipe Critic has a great recipe for Baked Honey Lime Chicken Taquitos. Like she says in her post, the flavor is unique, and delicious. Easy to make and definitely not your typical taquito.
7. Sally at Sally’s Baking Addiction has a delicious recipe for Skillet Chicken with Creamy Cilantro Lime Sauce. She writes that her recipe reminds her of her days waitressing at Chili’s, and I agree, it definitely has a Chili’s vibe to it. Yum! Her recipe cooks chicken breasts from scratch, which does add some extra goodness to the overall flavor, but in a pinch, you could whip up this sauce to really dress up leftover rotisserie chicken, just skip the oven step so the chicken doesn’t dry out.
What’s your favorite way to use leftover chicken?
