Tricks of the Trade: Left Over Chicken

As you may know from past Menu Plan Mondays – my family LOVES to eat whole chicken that is cooked in the crock pot. It’s so easy and so yummy and their are SOOO many different things you can do with the chicken. Plus, when chicken goes on sale, it’s a VERY affordable meal! (I bought my last chickens for $0.59 a pound making them $2-$3 a piece!)

So what can you do with the cooked chicken (or a precooked rotisserie chicken)?  Well here are 6 (mostly) healthy ideas to get you thinking:

1. Mexican Dishes
   This is probably my #1 use for extra chicken. You can use it for Burritos, enchiladas, fajitas or tacos. I like to use it when I make this Taco Bake and Enchilada Casserole.
2. Pasta Dishes
   This is probably my second most common use for extra chicken. I LOVE it in THIS Alfredo pasta dish. You could even use the chicken instead of ground beef or turkey in a lasagna!
3. Salads
   Rotisserie chicken added to just about any salad (even a house salad)is the best! You could make a BBQ chicken salad with corn and your other favorite salad veggies topped with BBQ and Ranch Dressing. Or you could make a Cesar salad and add some of the chicken in…or my favorite you could use it to make Chinese Chicken Salad! Yummy!
4. Sandwiches & Wraps
   Use the chicken to make a “chicken salad filling” by adding celery and apple. Use plain low fat yogurt with a hint of curry powder or cumin for the dressing. You can serve in a a whole wheat pita or use it to fill whole wheat tortillas.
5. Soups
   A very simple recipe is to add 2 cups of chopped rotisserie chicken, you choice of chopped veggies (onion, carrots, celery, etc), and 1 cute of uncooked rice or noodles to 3 cans of fat free chicken broth.
6. Pizza Toppings
   You could use it to make THIS BBQ chicken pizza! Yummy!

Just a side note: If you are going to cook a chicken (like THIS one), or buy it precooked, I would recommend taking off all the meat from the bones before storing it in the fridge. It has been my experience that when I store it with the meat still on the bones the meat drys out. I like to store mine in a plastic container but more often than not I put it into a zip lock bag.

Related posts:

1. Menu Plan Monday 8/3
2. Cheap Whole Chicken at Ralphs!
3. Menu Plan Monday 11/23

Aimee   |  Recipes, Tricks of the Trade   |  10/06/09    |    Print This Post