Introduction
Rotisserie chicken is often a cheap and quick way to get dinner on the table when shopping at a store such as Costco and Sam’s Club that sell a whole fully cooked 3-pound chicken for under $5. For some families, that whole 3-pound chicken is gone after their dinner meal. For other families there’s leftovers they don’t want to reuse to make the same meal the next few nights. In this blog, we will be sharing recipes using leftover rotisserie chicken meat or if you want a cheap dinner from a $5 three pound fully cooked chicken.
Meal ideas
One idea is to simply remove the skin, shred the chicken meat from the bone, weigh the remaining meat and place it in a freezer bag with the date, what it is and how much the meat weighs to use in future meals.
Some ways to use up the rotisserie meat from frozen to thawed or shredded leftovers are:
over top of salads
in quesadillas, or burritos, or tacos
over top of baked tortilla chips and cheese
plain with broccoli and rice on the side
Here’s 25 recipe ideas from Six Sisters Stuff: 25 Recipe Ideas for Rotisserie Chicken; 47 recipe ideas from Food Network: 47 Best Rotisserie Chicken Recipes; 30-minute recipes from All Recipes: 30-Minute Recipes With Rotisserie Chicken; 30 recipes from The Pioneer Woman: 30 Easy Recipes Using Rotisserie Chicken and 140 recipes from Taste of Home: 140 Easy Rotisserie Chicken Recipes
Or you can add to that chicken freezer bag a few more ingredients from this recipe, Mexican Stuffed Chicken Shells, to make it into a future freezer meal; (see the linked recipe notes for details.) When making chicken freezer meals, simply skip the cook chicken part and follow the remaining steps since your chicken is already cooked. If the recipe calls for seasoning while cooking the meat, try out adding the seasonings with the remaining steps and ingredients.
Here are some more freezer meal recipe ideas using the leftover rotisserie chicken: Black Bean and Corn Salsa Chicken, Easy Chicken Parmesan Casserole, and Back-to-School Rotisserie Chicken Freezer Meals.
Finally, you can use up the rotisserie chicken bones to make chicken stock; there are many chicken stock recipes online so try a few out and see which one you prefer the taste better. Here’s a simple recipe for chicken stock from Simply Recipes: How to Make Chicken Stock.
Homemade vs Store Bought
Sometimes it can be cheaper to cook your own whole chicken. In weeks past, we have seen a whole uncooked chicken for $0.89 a pound making it $2.67 for a 3-pound chicken versus just under $5 for a whole 3-pound rotisserie chicken. Prices may vary where you live, so instead of comparing the 15+ stores around you, utilize Saving Groceries to find out the cheapest prices and if cooking your own chicken saves you money over store bought rotisserie chicken. Our favorite way to cook a whole chicken is in a pressure cooker such as an Instant Pot or an Air Fryer such as the Ninja Foodie Air Fryer XL edition with some salt and pepper and homemade or store-bought Italian seasoning. Follow your pressure cooker or air fryer instructions for cooking time making sure the fattest part of your chicken reads at least 165 degrees Fahrenheit before consuming.
Conclusion
How do you like your chicken? We like ours juicy over dry, but however you enjoy your chicken we hope these tips give you some ideas on how to use up rotisserie chicken and turn it into other recipes. We suggest you print this page out for quick reference if you are working on implementing some or all of these tips and place it in your recipe binder for quick, easy access for your meal planning. We are referencing the recipe binder we spoke about in our blog post meal planning. If you haven’t yet started meal planning, we suggest you check out our blog post meal planning to help save you money and time on your groceries. If you want to learn more about making your own freezer meals, check out our blog How To Make Freezer Meals. In our next blog, this Tuesday, we will be sharing some cheap breakfast ideas. Leave a comment for what you found the most helpful and Subscribe so you never miss a blog! Stay saucy!
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