Tag: leftover

What to do with leftover chicken and turkey: roast chicken risotto

1 Comment

Risotto isn’t one of those quick and easy, on the table in 20 minutes kind of dinners. You have to stand there and cook and stir and add stock for a looong time. But you know, when it’s dark and wet outside and you’re kind of fed up with everything, that’s okay. Sometimes you just want to stand there and stir something.

This roast chicken risotto recipe used to be my number one method of disposing of a dead body. There’s nothing like it to get rid of the evidence you had a chicken for your dinner than using it up in this delicious, simple risotto. But now I’m cooking a chicken every week, it would get a bit samey. If you try this, though, you’ll see why it’s my number one chicken disposal plan.

Week Six : Leftovers - Roast chicken risotto

INGREDIENTS

  • Knob of butter and a splash of olive oil
  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic
  • 350g risotto rice
  • 1 glass white wine
  • 1.5 litres simmering stock (chicken would be best)
  • Cup of frozen peas, defrosted
  • Leftover chicken – half a chook max
  • 50g grated parmesan

METHOD

  • Melt the butter and add the olive oil to a big pan. I use a giant saute pan to make my risotto.
  • Cook the garlic and onion together until translucent.
  • Stir in the rice until coated with the butter.
  • Stir in the wine and cook until evaporated.
  • Add a ladleful of stock and stir, stir, stir – ever so gently – until the stock is evaporated. Then, repeat the process until you have just one ladleful of stock left. This is boring and dull, but not all cooking is about flamenco dancing around the kitchen with sharp knives, slicing lemons and throwing them at a great distance into fiery cauldrons of magical stew.
  • At this point, add your chicken and your peas. I haven’t specified how much chicken, because this is a recipe for leftovers and that would, frankly, be madness. Who wants leftovers from a leftover recipe?
  • Cook for five minutes, then stir in the parmesan cheese and serve.

Serves four adults.

What to do with leftover chicken and turkey: Miso-Chicken Ramen

2 Comments

One of my favourite meals to use up chicken is now, officially, ramen. Not only does it make good use of all that chicken stock I’ve got knocking around the place (smug foodie moment! Ha ha, I have homemade chicken stock, ho ho!) but it’s also a quick and healthy meal, and you get to use up loads of veggies.

All you have to do is put some cooked, drained Chinese noodles at the bottom of a deep dish, and then cover it with toppings of your choice – in my case, shredded pak choi, boiled egg, wedges of red onion, beansprouts, bamboo shoots and cooked (leftover!) chicken. Then, pour over chicken stock with miso paste stirred into it. After that, eat it! The recipe serves one – but is easily doubled.

Week Four: Leftovers, Miso chicken ramen

INGREDIENTS

  • One sheet egg noodles
  • 500ml chicken stock
  • 1-2 tbsp miso paste
  • 1 head pak choi
  • Handful beansprouts
  • 1 boiled egg
  • Half red onion
  • 1 tbsp bamboo shoots (I used the kind in red oil)
  • Handful cooked chicken

METHOD

  • Heat the chicken stock in a pan. Meanwhile, boil water for your noodles.
  • While all that is cooking, prepare your veggies – shred the pak choi, cut the onion into thin wedges and rinse the beansprouts.
  • Cook the noodles according to the instructions on the packet, then drain and rinse. Place them in the bottom of your bowl.
  • Put all your toppings on the noodles, then stir the miso paste into your chicken to taste. Don’t let it boil because this will destroy the universe.
  • Once it’s stirred in, pour the hot stock over your ramen and eat!

What to do with leftover chicken and turkey: bang bang chicken

1 Comment

One recipe I turn to quite often for leftover chicken or turkey is Nigella Lawson’s recipe for bang bang turkey salad. You can find it online here.

Week Five : Leftovers - Bang Bang chicken

It’s delicious and spicy, and refreshing thanks to the spring onions and cucumber. You can serve it as part of a large party spread, using up other left overs like pie or quiche, and people will think you’ve gone to a lot of effort to create a brand new dish, when, really, you’re just sneakily feeding them your left overs. HO HO HO!

INGREDIENTS

  • 2 tbsp groundnut oil
  • 2 tsp sesame oil
  • 3 tbsp smooth peanut butter
  • 2 tbsp chilli bean sauce (buy in Asian groceries)
  • 1 tbsp caster sugar
  • 1 tbsp soy sauce
  • 1.5 tbsp black Chinese vinegar
  • 2 tbsp water
  • 250g shredded chicken or turkey
  • Shredded iceberg lettuce
  • 20g chopped coriander
  • 20g chopped mint
  • Half cucumber
  • 6 spring onions

METHOD

  • Make the sauce by heating the groundnut oil, allowing to cool slightly, then adding the sesame oil, peanut butter, chilli bean sauce, caster sugar, soy sauce, vinegar and water.
  • Mix the sauce with the shredded chicken meat and lay it over a bed of shredded iceberg lettuce,which has been covered with the mint and coriander.
  • Finely slice the spring onions, and cut the cucumber into batons. Arrange on the platter.

Week Five : Leftovers - Bang Bang chicken close up

Delicious, spicy, and satisfying!

What to do with leftover chicken and turkey: hoisin chicken buns

4 Comments

This recipe is an adaptation of the hoisin chicken buns recipe from Cooking Light, by way of Cooking Cute.

Week One : Leftovers - Hoisin buns

To make this recipe, you first need a batch of white bread dough (for rolls) – you can either find fresh dough in the chiller cabinet of larger supermarkets (make sure it’s just plain old white bread dough, not focaccia or anything fancy like that!), or you can make a batch in your bread maker. This part is a faff, but the finished product is such an interesting and unusual way of using up leftover chicken, that I think it’s worth going to a little bit of extra effort – plus, these are portable, and perfect for lunches on the go!

INGREDIENTS

  • 1 batch fresh bread dough (see above)
  • 400g (approx) dark turkey / chicken meat
  • 2 tbsp hoisin sauce
  • 1 tbsp oyster sauce
  • 2 tsp rice vinegar
  • 1 bunch spring onions, shredded finely
Hoisin buns on tray

METHOD

  • Shred the chicken, and mix with the rest of the ingredients.
  • Once you’ve made your dough, turn it out and cut it into eight pieces, and roll each piece into a size slightly bigger than your palm.
  • Place a spoonful of the chicken mix into the middle of the bun.
  • Pull four corners into the middle and pinch, then do the same again with the leftover tabs, which should fall in between the compass points of the tabs you just sorted out. (It’s helpful to rock the bun back and forth at this point to shape the top nicely.)
  • Set it on an oiled tray and put the rest together.
Hoisin buns on cooling rack
  • Cover and allow to prove for 20 mins in a warm place.
  • Preheat your oven to 190C and then brush the buns with beaten egg and sprinkle with sesame seeds.
  • Bake for 15 mins, or until golden. You can also bake them for a shorter amount of time (12 mins or so) and then freeze them to bake again another day. (There are great instructions here for freezing and then reheating the buns at Cooking Cute.)
Hoisin bun halved
  • Allow to cool slighty, then eat!

 

What to do with leftover chicken and turkey: chilli chicken salad

1 Comment

I may have mentioned before my love for the late Sheila Lukins’ USA Cookbook. Her chilli chicken salad is a delicious way of using up turkey or chicken from your left over holiday meal!

Week Two: Leftovers, Chilli chicken salad - the start

INGREDIENTS

  • Half cup mayonnaise
  • Half cup sour cream
  • 2 tbsp lime juice
  • 1 red chilli, finely chopped
  • 1/2 tsp orange zest
  • 1/4 tsp chilli powder
  • 1/8 tsp cumin
  • 4 cups shredded chicken or turkey
  • One diced red pepper
  • One diced green pepper
  • 10 pitted black olives
  • 2 finely sliced spring onions
  • 2 tbsp chopped coriander
  • Bed of lettuce
  • Cayenne pepper (for dusting)
  • 1 avocado, sliced
  • Bunch red grapes

METHOD

  • In a bowl, mix together everything from the mayonnaise to the cumin.
  • Add in the rest of the ingredients down to the spring onion.
  • Lay the salad on your bed of lettuce, and dust with cayenne pepper, and sprinkle with the coriander.
  • Serve with the avocado and red grapes.

Week Two: Leftovers, Chilli chicken salad

Creamy, zingy, spicy… this is not leftover chicken as you know it!

Your easiest luxury Christmas shop ever!

1 Comment

Have you guys heard of Hello Fresh? They’re an amazing company that sends you boxes full of ingredients every week so you can make gourmet meals from scratch. Forget veggie boxes – this is where its at!

Hello Fresh have come up with a genius idea to take all of the stress out of that Christmas shop this year with their Christmas box! And, you can get £10 off with the code FOODFASHFIT, making it even more tempting! Inside the box are the ingredients you’ll need to put together a delicious meal for 4-6 people, or 8-10 people if you’ve got extended family coming over. It seems like they’ve literally thought of everything!

Included in the box are ingredients to prepare a prawn cocktail starter (my favourite!), plus turkey and all the trimmings, a Christmas pudding – and a cheeseboard! A cheeseboard! Now, that’s Christmas luxury! The food has been sourced from top quality providers, including sausages and bacon from Tom Hixson of Smithfield Market, a free range Copas turkey (which won a Great Taste award), and prawns from James Knight in Mayfair (who holds two Royal Warrants, if you please!).

The prawn cocktail starter is made using delicious tiger prawns, and for the main course there’s a whole host of goodies. For the 4-6 people option, you get a 2.5kg turkey breast, pop-up cooking timer (a Godsend!), cranberry sauce with rosemary, free range Goose fat, sage and onion stuffing with red onion, and gravy with cracked black pepper. You also get pigs in blankets, and a selection of veggies (including red cabbage, sprouts, carrots, and parsnips) to make side dishes like garlic and herb infused Brussels sprouts with toasted pine nuts (recipes included, of course)! Plus, there’s your good old fashioned spuds – which, trust me, will taste amazing with that goose fat! For pudding, there’s another Royal seal of approval from the Christmas pudding makers, Wilkin and Sons, which is accompanied by brandy butter – and you get some mince pies, too.

And, finally, that gourmet cheese board with creamy Wenslydale with cranberries, reblochon, and red Leicester, plus, a variety of crackers.

What, you thought that was it? Nope! This is Christmas, people – time to really push the boat out! You also get some treats to round everything off with – Joe and Steph’s mince pie popcorn, candy canes, Prestat choccies, and table crackers!

I’d say that with all of that, Christmas is pretty much sorted! The Christmas box for 8-10 contains the same products in larger quantities (for example, a whole 5kg Copas turkey instead of a turkey breast). They’re even going to pop in some ideas for the leftovers, too.

The Christmas box costs £155 for 4-6, or £225 for 8-10. But, don’t forget my FOODFASHFIT code, which brings it down by a tenner! You already save up to 35% on the RRP of these items with these economical boxes, and with £10 off, those savings jump even more.

I’ll be testing out a Hello Fresh box or two in the upcoming weeks, so look out for that – and make sure to use that FOODFASHFIT code if you order – its valid on any boxes, even the non-Christmas ones!