Leftover Roasted Chicken

Do you ever buy those whole, roasted chickens at the grocery store? We buy them every now and then since they’re easy and delicious. We usually just eat them as is with a couple of sides. But since we had chicken a few nights ago, I wanted to use the rest of the leftover roasted chicken in a new way. Luckily, there happen to be an article in this month’s Cooking Light magazine on ways to use leftover rotisserie chicken. How convenient!

They listed a couple ideas like enchiladas, chicken tossed with bbq sauce, used in soups or chili, but the one that stood out for me was thai chicken salad. It just looked easy and delicious. Two things I love! I already had most of the ingredients. The only thing I had to buy was romaine lettuce (we usually only have spinach). I tweaked a couple things in the recipe, but everything ended up working well together.

Here’s the recipe I used:

Thai Chicken Salad with Peanut Dressing

• 4 cups torn romaine lettuce (original recipe calls for 6 but that yields 4 servings)
• 2 cups shredded rotisserie chicken- I eyeballed this. I figured we can always add more chicken if we wanted.
• 1 1/2 cup broccoli slaw- the original recipe calls for bean sprouts but since I had a bag of broccoli slaw, I thought that would be perfect!
• 1/2 cup shredded carrots
• 2/3 cup light coconut milk
• 1/2 cup chopped cilantro
• 1 tbsp brown sugar
• 2 tbsp creamy peanut butter
• 1 tbsp lime juice
• 2 tbsp low sodium soy sauce
• 1/8 tsp red pepper flakes- original calls for ground red pepper, I only had flakes!
• 2 tbsp chopped peanuts

First, I started on the salad dressing since that took the most time. I added the coconut milk, brown sugar, peanut butter, lime juice, soy sauce, and pepper flakes in a sauce pan and brought it to a boil. Once it started boiling, I lowered the heat to a simmer and let it cook for about 5 minutes.

The peanut butter took a little time to cook down. Maybe next time I’ll microwave it first so it doesn’t stay as chunky.

After about 5 minutes, I took it off the burner and let it cool down. Now on to the salad!

I used a couple forks to shred the chicken and just ripped the romaine up by hand. I threw everything into a big bowl, then added the chicken, peanuts, and dressing. That’s it! Dinner was served!

This was really good! The peanut dressing was really delicious. It was the perfect amount of food and a great alternative to just warming up the rest of the chicken.

Do you buy those already cooked rotisserie chickens? Do you ever use them in recipes?