Rotisserie Chicken

First, I am so sorry that I've been mia from the blogging world. I don't really have any excuses, other than life got in the way. Between losing a dear friend to cancer and school starting and a general "blah" kind of feeling lately, I haven't done much with my blogs. I'm trying to get back into it, since I really do enjoy it! So tonight, I'm going to talk about rotisserie chicken. Don't you love those?? The wonderful warm and moist chicken that you bring home for an easy dinner that the family loves..... Yum!! But after a tasty meal, don't you end up with something that looks a bit like this?:

Not quite so pleasant, eh? I think most people just look at that and think, "Leftover rotisserie chicken. Yuck. What am I supposed to do with THAT?" Somehow it just isn't quite as appealing sitting there cold and refrigerated, with the once-delightful juices now congealed and just plain icky! But you should never, never waste the chicken that is left. You can do wonderful things with it!! In this particular situation, I got two more meals out of these leftovers.

My initial advice is to avoid the congealing. It's just pretty much disgusting. Allow the remaining chicken to cool until it can be handled and then pick the meat off the bones before refrigerating. If this isn't possible, you can always rinse off all the "goo," but I know it's a deterrent to making this meat last. I removed as much meat as I could from the bones, and then I set the bones aside in the fridge for making soup later.

Out of some of the shredded meat, I made THIS:


Delicious fried rice made with some of my other leftovers, including some cole slaw mix that was left from bierocks I made earlier in the week. I also tossed in some zucchini from the last picking of my garden. It was soooooo good!

The next night, it was a little cooler and rainy, and just felt like a soup night. So I simmered the bones in a pot of water to make a nice stock and made chicken noodle soup. As I still had quite a bit of chicken left (and still had zucchini, too), I made chicken-zucchini stuffed bread to go with it. Doesn't this look good?:

It was quite tasty! I used some veggie noodles I had gotten very cheaply at the store with a sale/coupon combination to make a very inexpensive soup! I also chopped up some carrots that were left in the fridge. Both of these meals were great use-it-up strategies that didn't FEEL like leftovers. That's kind of the point, isn't it?

Next time you get a rotisserie chicken, be sure you get at least two meals out of it. Even if your family eats most of the meat the first night, you can definitely cook some stock/broth out of it. You'll likely be amazed at how much MORE meat you can get once you've simmered it awhile, too. Rotisserie chickens can be used for multiple meals so you definitely get your money's worth! This just gives you a couple of examples. Let your creativity go, and see what you can do with the sad leftovers of a deli chicken!