Easy meals with oven-roasted or rotisserie chickens

 
It’s always a good time for quick weeknight meal ideas, whether you’re dealing with the back-to-school rush, summer sports, or other seasonal events that eat up your planning time. Oven-roasted or rotisserie chickens make the dinner dash doable.

The fresh oven-roasted whole chickens at PCC are industry leaders for quality (see details below). They make an all-purpose tool for just about any cooking style or personal taste. Try these techniques and ideas. (Note that some recipes call for rotisserie chicken. Rotisserie chicken technically refers to birds that are cooked on a rotating spit, but it has become something of a catchall phrase. Meat from any roasted chicken is generally interchangeable.)

Slice & Chop

Bowls and salads are your most versatile friends when it comes to using chopped or sliced roast chicken for an easy protein centerpiece.

Add chicken to burrito bowls like these, or customize your own bowl with deli pico de gallo, fiesta corn salad, guacamole or whatever fits your taste.  Toppings we like for burrito bowls include sour cream, crumbled Cotija cheese, cilantro and lime.

For grain bowls, follow this template: Start with a base of cooked grains, e.g. quinoa or farro. Add the chopped chicken and some chopped roasted and/or raw vegetables. Broccoli? Cherry tomatoes? Carrots? Edamame? Follow your bliss, and remember that the salad bar can be your friend for small quantities of prepped produce. Add dressing — if you don’t want to DIY there’s prepared lemon tahini, green goddess, and other options in the PCC deli. If you like, top the bowl with something crunchy, like a handful of seeds or nuts, and something pickly or fermented – we like kimchi.

Chopped or diced chicken takes center stage in chicken salad, as with this basic PCC recipe or this Southwest version or this curried cashew variation. (Instead of cooking a chicken breast, just use the pre-roasted chicken.) Serve over lightly dressed greens.

Salads can also be as simple as adding chicken to your prepared deli Caesar salad (or use our recipe to make your own), or branch out with refreshers like a Quick Chicken and Peach Salad.

Transform the chicken Caesar salad into a grab-and-go dinner by adding a tortilla and making a Chicken Caesar Salad Wrap.

Shred

Shredded meat from an oven-roasted chicken can either enhance a dish or serve as a centerpiece. Just remove the skin first.

You might “hack your mac” by adding shredded oven-roasted chicken to homemade or deli-bought mac and cheese. Make it next-level by mixing the chicken with buffalo sauce first. Save kitchen time by using shredded oven-roasted chicken to quick baked dishes like casseroles, rice or pasta bakes.

Dinner doesn’t get much simpler than these Easy Chicken Enchiladas or Easy Chicken Quesadillas using shredded oven-roasted chicken, or go a little more deluxe with these hit Chicken Quesadillas with Apple Salsa from PCC’s Cooking From Scratch cookbook.

For something cooler, try these Asian Chicken Lettuce Wraps. Brighten up dinner with longtime PCC cooking class chef Pranee Halverson’s Yum Gai Mamuang (Thai Chicken Mango Salad).

Simmer

There’s little as comforting as chicken noodle soup, and this PCC recipe is a quick classic that uses the meat from a roasted whole chicken along with vegetables and pantry basics. Oven-roasted chicken also makes a great addition to simmered soups like this white bean chicken chilil.

Bone broth is becoming a popular nutrient-rich sipping choice throughout the day, from breakfast (sometimes with eggs poached in the broth) to a mug before bed. After you’ve stripped the meat from a pre-roasted chicken, make broth from the carcass. Here’s one PCC recipe for broth.

STIR-FRY

Go freestyle stir-frying with expert advice from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt in this excerpt from his award-winning book “The Wok.” Add the oven-roasted chicken near the end of your stir-fries to avoid drying it out.

Get a delicious, well-balanced mix of protein, vegetables and carbs in this Quick Soba Stir-Fry using cubed or shredded roast chicken.

Add shredded chicken to beef up – er, chicken-up – side dishes into mains, like this Phad Prik King (curried stir-fried vegetables with basil.)