We’re gonna let you in on a little secret of ours…you can make delicious authentic international meals at home just by pairing a rotisserie chicken with 3 of our meal kits.
One ready to eat rotisserie chicken at Costco costs $4.99. But this chicken is HUGE! We tested it with 3 of our best-selling meal kits to see how it would hold up. The result was that even though our meal kits only technically feed 4 adults, we were able to stretch the meals to feed more like 6 people! All of a sudden, your cost per person goes down to $5.50 and the food is super high quality. So next time you open that restaurant delivery app and think about paying $15/meal, consider learning how to make your favorite takeout at home with one of our kits and a rotisserie chicken.
How long does it typically take to receive a delivery? For us it’s around 45-60 minutes. And I don’t know about you, but I spend that time doing random stuff like thinking about the food I’m about to eat, decluttering my home, or scrolling through Instagram. In that same time you could have learned how to cook your favorite food and ended up with 5x the amount (and plenty to inspire work lunch envy the next day).
So how do the recipes stack up? Here is a list of the meal kits that we’ve tested with rotisserie chicken:
Let me just say that before eating this, I preferred vegetarian masalas with paneer and chickpeas. But the slightly shredded and cubed rotisserie chicken paired with our Butter Chicken & Basmati Rice meal kit was absolutely delicious.
The best part might have been how much butter chicken we ended up with. I was a little concerned that there would not be enough sauce since I prefer my butter chicken to be very saucy. The amount you will add depends on how many mouths you need to feed and your preferred sauce to chicken ratio. I found that you could easy end up with 5-6 cups of chicken from a Costco rotisserie chicken. I ended up adding 4 cups (1 cup of cubed chicken per person) and still had plenty of sauce. If you need to get 5-6 portions out of the kit, you can add more chicken, but just keep in mind that it may turn out a little drier. If you add water to stretch the sauce, the flavor will be milder (and not as yummy, in my opinion!).
Conclusion: Would I make this again for a dinner party to show off for friends? Yes! Will they think it’s from an Indian restaurant – most definitely yes! Will we be able to feed everyone and accommodate seconds? Yup! And all for under $32.99 ($5-7.75/person).
I didn’t think it was possible to improve our pho kit. After all, you can keep a complete Vietnamese pho meal kit in your pantry for when you crave pho (often!) and then take it out and have pho on the table in 40 minutes! Personally, I enjoy the kit with included tofu and I was skeptical of replacing tofu with chicken. After all, the broth is very veggie and spice heavy. My main takeaway from using this kit with rotisserie chicken was that the chicken flavor DOES enhance the broth in a way that I didn’t expect. The fat from using a full chicken definitely added depth that I wasn’t expecting. The dish went from light and satisfying to very hearty!
Again we found ourselves being able to load this soup up with the rotisserie chicken (~3/4-1 cup per person). To begin with, this pho meal kit easily feeds 5+. When you add a whole rotisserie chicken, you could probably feed an army!
As someone who is not a huge chicken lover to begin with, I found myself going back for seconds. I also happily ate leftovers for a few days AND STILL had more (which I froze for when my husband was by himself for the weekend - #bestwifeever).
Conclusion: I think we’re really onto something here and it you have a sick friend, you should pick up a rotisserie chicken and make this for them ASAP! They could probably happily live on it until they can get back on their feet J
Now that we’ve remastered our quick injera flatbread mix (with the gracious help of our teff experts at Teff Co!), we had to try out a meat-atarian version of our Ethiopian Spiced Lentils & Teff Flatbread with rotisserie chicken. Heads up: this kit takes a little more patience because of the injera crepe-making so make sure to leave it for a day that you’re motivated to cook (the pho and butter chicken kits are better for lazier days)!
Overall, this rendition reminded me of Ethiopian doro wat but without all the work. It doesn’t quite have that chocolatey/mole sauce taste, but try it out and you’ll see what I mean. Since we include a pre-made berbere sauce from Eleni’s Kitchen, all you need to do is separate the rotisserie chicken into shreds with a fork and warm it with the sauce on a backburner while you make the teff pancakes. I wouldn’t recommend adding more than 2 cups of chicken to the sauce, so you could probably get away with a smaller rotisserie chicken from Safeway, Krogers, or even Walmart.
Once again, the chicken elevated this dish and also made for some ‘gramable photo ops. We served it with a simple salad that we had from Trader Joe’s. Leftovers for DAYS with just the 2 of us. The berbere chicken can be frozen, but we would not recommend freezing the injera. Injera is traditionally served cold and our leftovers kept well in the fridge in a tight Tupperware container.
Conclusion: swapping out lentils for rotisserie chicken turned this Ethiopian meal kit from a special occasion meal to something I will be making WAY more often. I can’t believe how close our teff flatbread is to real injera and how similar the berbere chicken tastes to doro wat. Both of these dishes take days to make and you can get 90% of the way there in just 40 minutes.
Overall: I’ll never pass a rotisserie chicken kiosk again without snagging one to take home for a Takeout Kit night.
Up next? Our world famous Burmese Curry Noodles (Khao Soi) paired with rotisserie chicken. Stay tuned!
On to you - have you tried any Takeout Kits with rotisserie chicken yet? What were your favorites? Any tips?
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