Using a whole rotisserie chicken
The ultimate recession buster
Costco is a wonderful place. Now, the towering aisles of bulk products, stacked to the vaulted, warehouse ceilings, can be intimidating to the uninitiated. And no matter who you are, a good chunk of the wholesaler’s offerings will not be terribly useful to you. A thoroughly incomplete list of Costco’s offerings that I have never purchased include: appliances, beds, jewelry, computers, vacation packages, and even automobiles.
However, I have also bought a staggering array of items there over the years. Baked goods. Golf balls. HVAC filters. Advil. Liquid IV. Diapers. Briskets. An entire frozen duck (and I’m coming for the whole lamb the next time my wife is out of town).
In your 20s, it’s an incredible place to buy booze in bulk and cheaply build a home bar. As you age, you find more utility in other aisles around the store, things like cheap San Marzano tomato three-packs, or quality maple syrup. The Costco food court offers the cheapest meal around, at $1.50 for a large, quality hot dog and a soda, a price that CEO Jim Sinegal famously defended to Costco President W. Craig Jelinek. When Jelinek complained about how much money the company was losing on the product, Sinegal told him, simply, “If you raise [the price of] the effing hot dog, I will kill you.” Fantastic stuff.
But Costco’s single best buy remains its rotisserie chicken, glazed and golden, awaiting your arrival under a heat lamp.
Even as cost of living has spiked from both inflation and price-gouging, that blessed rotisserie chicken remains a bastion of affordability, a sturdy rock holding fast against the economic tides. The cost? Just $4.99.
How Costco has achieved this is a story of its own. But we’re here today to talk about how to take this already incredible value and make the absolute most of it. Whether you’re an accomplished home cook or a broke college student, you can get an unbelievable amount of use out of this single, $5 item, with very little additional cost.
Of course, you can just eat the chicken. It’s a whole bird, which means wings, and thighs, and breasts. You can feed a whole family very cheaply and be done right there. But if you’re willing, right as you get home from shopping, to take 5-10 minutes to cut and pick the meat off the bones, the world of possibilities opens up in front of you.
Answers vary on the internet (imagine that), but generally people seem to agree that a standard rotisserie chicken yields somewhere around 3-4 cups of shredded meat. I can tell you that is, in my Costco experience, certainly short of what we get. This week, we used 2.5 cups in one recipe, another two cups in another, and still had more than a cup left. If you believe Reddit, you’ll get nearly three pounds of meat from one Costco bird.
That’s a lot of meat! You can do all sorts of interesting things from that starting point, much of it without additional cooking. But first, do one of two things: Take everything that’s left — the bones, the drippings, all the rest — and put it in the freezer, either in its container or a big freezer bag. Or, you can use all that make stock immediately, and put it to use in your meals for the week.
A chicken stock can be as simple or complex as the ingredients you have kicking around. I often find that, when buying celery, I end up with more than I can use. If you’re in the same boat, throw that in the freezer as well and save it for this moment (or use it fresh, if you already have it). Got an onion? Great. A few garlic cloves? Even better. Some peppercorns or extra herbs? Bitchin’.
I like to make stock in our Instant Pot, but you can also do it in a regular pot on the stovetop. Either way, heat some olive oil over medium-high, and toss your chicken bits in, stirring occasionally to get some good browning on everything, 5-10 minutes. Then add your veggies and sweat them out, seasoning as you go, another 5 minutes. Toss any other spices or herbs you’re including and expose them to the oil in the pot for about 30 seconds, before adding water to cover. Either set your instant pot to pressure cook on high for 90-120 minutes, or bring your stovetop pot to a boil, then reduce to a simmer, and let bubble uncovered for at least six hours, adding water as necessary to keep everything covered. When finished, strain and use immediately or refrigerate in a sealed container (allow it to cool to room temperature before you put into the fridge).
Now, let’s make some chili.
Our first use last week was a New York Times Cooking green chicken chili recipe, which included a couple cups of shredded chicken, white beans, canned green chiles, onion, jalapeño (which we skipped), garlic, canned corn, and some spices. Everything cooks in the chicken stock you just made. It all happens in one pot, comes together fairly quickly, and gives you great leftovers for the week.
Thursday night, I decided to wing it, combining elements of a number of recipes I’ve seen online recently. I chopped a whole yellow onion and minced four cloves of garlic, then sweated them out in olive oil in our Dutch oven. I added a pinch of red pepper flake, then a one-pound bag of orzo to toast for a minute, before giving it the risotto treatment, slowly adding chicken stock until it incorporated and cooked through.
At the same time, I boiled a pot of salted water and blanched an entire bag of kale we had sitting around for a minute, dumping it into an ice bath to shock it. I blended the kale with a little bit of the reserved blanching water and added it to the orzo pot, along with about two cups of the shredded chicken, with more salt and pepper to taste. I served it with a drizzle of olive oil and a scoop of ricotta we had kicking around in the fridge. It was quite good.
And still, after all that, we had more than a cup of chicken left. No matter the quantity remaining (even if it’s sometimes the entire chicken), my go-to in that situation is chicken salad. For roughly each cup of shredded chicken, you chop one celery stick, slice a quarter of a red onion, slice a green onion, and throw a couple of tablespoons of mayo and a teaspoon of dijon mustard, along with salt and pepper, into a bowl and mix. Adjust your condiments to achieve the desired consistency. And you can always throw some dried parsley or celery seed in, if it suits you.
Make sandwiches or eat it straight, it’s a great thing to have in the fridge. And even if you add up all the other ingredients in each recipe I’ve listed above — onions, garlic, celery, carrots (optional), beans, green chiles, corn — that’s all maybe $15 worth of groceries? Along with the $5 chicken, you’ve made two quality sets of dinners and leftovers for a family, plus chicken salad for multiple lunches, all for $20. That’s the power of the rotisserie chicken.
So, thank you, Costco. And please don’t ever raise that price, or I will…well, I’ll have to go back and make edits to this newsletter.