Rotisserie Chicken

I had to call in reinforcements for this one......trusty ole' Mom and Dad. I found a recipe that I wanted to try and it called for chopped rotisserie chicken. I'd seen these poor things under heat lamps at the grocery, sitting there all sad just begging for a nice family of 4 to take them home. I've always just walked by, never sure what I would do with it. 

Well, I didn't want to be a hypocrite and NOT do something just because I didn't know how. So, I called up my Mom to see if she would have time to show me how to pull apart the lucky chicken that I had plucked from under that sad, sad heat lamp.

Thankfully, her and Tom (my Dad :) had some time after their afternoon walk and before preparing their own dinner to squeeze in a small cooking class! Here's how it went.

This is the lucky lemon pepper chicken I chose.

Dad went after the leg first, it just tore away with a little tug. Then, he just started picking. You just pull off any meat that you find, sifting it through your fingers removing any skin that is on the chicken and watching out for any bones along the way.

After the leg, he grabbed the breast. He just used his thumb to push a large part of meat away from the bone and then sift, sift, sift.

Slowly, but surly, the shredded chicken started to pile up.

He just kept looking for lean pieces of chicken. When he came across a bone, a little blood (ugh), or a fatty part of the meat, it was discarded.

A lot more of the chicken was discarded than I thought there would be. Here is a large part of what was left over.

All the leftovers were placed back in the bag and taken OUTSIDE. Don't make the mistake of leaving it the house or you will be left with a smell that is definitely not appetizing.



Our final product.

From there, I was ready to complete my recipe!

Chicken Nachos

Ingredients
1 can re-fried beans (the fat free only had 20 less calories per servings, so I got the regular for taste)
Tortilla Chips of your choice (I went with multigrain Tostito Tortilla Chips, but you could do baked for less calories)
1 Rotisserie chicken
2 cups shredded 2% Mexican cheese blend
1 can Rotel or diced tomatoes (I did Rotel because it was on sale)
1/2 cup chopped green onion
Optional: Serve with salsa, guacamole, plain avocado, and/or sour cream
- I went with avocado and salsa

Directions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Microwave refried beans with a pinch of water for about 1 min (just so they are "spreadable.") Arrange tortilla chips on a large foil-lined baking sheet; top with beans, chicken, cheese, tomatoes or Rotel, and green onion.
Bake for 10 min or until cheese is melted and bubbly.

It was a crowd pleaser:)

And using the foil made clean up a breeze!!!!

Thanks Mom and Dad for the Sunday afternoon cooking lesson!!!