Don’t Be Too Ashamed To Pull Your Chicken

By Josh Steiner
Contributing Writer

You’ve been there and made a roasted chicken or picked up a rotisserie bird from the Megalo-Mart only to get home and find most of the family has other plans. But that’s life, plans sometimes change and, face it, sometimes there are just going to be leftovers no matter how tasty your roasted chicken was or how present your family is. Fact of the matter is you still got a lot of good eating left on that ½ carved bird.  You can stretch that into close to a dozen pulled chicken tacos and possibly more.

I always wait until my chicken is good and hot before I pull it…

Now that you know it’s possible to make something edible out of leftover chicken, just trust my incompetent fingers to clack it out correctly on this old, beat up google machine, so here we go. 

First we got to get that chicken hot—it’s much easier to pull warm chicken than cold. Because the variety of textures become easier to differentiate from one another when the chicken is warm making it less likely that you will throw in an unwanted tendon or piece of cartilage into your pile.
     
A 350 degree oven for about 20-30 minutes should be more than enough—for your ½ chicken, you don’t need to heat it all the way through, just warm enough to loosen it up a bit. After 20-30 minutes, remove the chicken and pull off all of the remaining meat, and set aside bones, skin, cartilage, etc.

Now we are going to grab our pot. Picking up chickens is more desirable if you get them sauced…

While you are heating the chicken you will have time to build your sauce. All you need is one pot, a stove top and 8 ounces of pico de gallo (recipe for pico can be found on my blog page at ( http://thepeoplespressproject.org ) or substitute a jar of salsa. Secondly, add 1 cup of chicken stock (I prefer low sodium so I can add the amount of salt I desire myself). Lastly, add half an envelope of taco seasoning and 1 Tablespoon of corn starch dissolved in 1 Tablespoon cold water.

Combine all ingredients in the pot on the stove top, bring to a boil and then drop down the temperature to a good simmer. Make sure to stir often otherwise the veggies in the pico will stick to the bottom of the pot and burn. If there is anything we’ve learned after last summer’s debacle, the last thing you want to happen in the F-M area is get caught with smoking pots.

Simmer until reduced by half then add your corn starch slurry and watch as your sauce tightens up. Throw in your pile of pulled chicken and heat it for 10-20 min. Don’t heat for too long or rubbery chicken will be your dubious award. Use as taco meat or top tortilla chips with chicken and cheese for nachos, garnish with a little sour cream and some chopped cilantro. See? Nothing to be embarrassed about, everybody pulls their chicken from time to time. It beats the cut up breast nibs at Chipotle…

Want to squeeze another serving out of this chicken? Find out how on my blog: Food Porn in the Peoples Press Project… http://thepeoplespressproject.org 

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[Joshua Steiner has worked in restaurants and kitchens for most of his life and held just about every conceivable job in the industry. Now he’s bringing his tips, tricks and travels to The High Plains Reader and http://thepeoplespressproject.org for you to use in YOUR kitchen.]