Quick Rotisserie Chicken and Pecan Salad with Roasted Asparagus

Rotisserie Chicken Salad with Roasted Proscuitto Asparagus is a simple and delicious Low Carb Dinner

 

One of the easiest ways to eat healthy when faced with a busy schedule is to let someone do part of the work for you.  

Using a rotisserie chicken from the market is an incredibly versatile and delicious way to save time during a busy work week.

Adding roasted Proscuitto asparagus puts the dish over the top with delicious flavor.

The hot, fresh, and ready to eat rotisserie chicken makes an easy and delicious meal. 

Often, it's arguably more affordable than purchasing a raw chicken and there is no reason to heat up the oven on warm summer days.

 

 

How to break down a rotisserie chicken for multiple meals 

 

The key to getting one or many great meals out of a rotisserie chicken in my opinion is to break the chicken completely down in an effort to minimize waste.  

Start by grabbing the leg by the thickest part and breaking it away from the bird.  

Similarly to the leg, grab the thickest part of the wing and snap it off.

It's hard to resist eating a wing but if you do I won't hold it against you. If you have more willpower than me, then set the wing aside or put it on the cutting board.  

 

Repeat with the other leg and chicken wing.

To get to the breast meat, start by peeling the skin off the chicken from the breast as best as you can. 

Run your fingers down either side of the breast bone and remove the breast meat in a large chunk or in chunks.  

Place the breast meat aside on the cutting board as well, separate from the other pieces.

 

The chicken has lots of delicious meat other than in the breast and legs

 

With the white breast meat removed, go back to where the wings and legs were. Using your fingers, pick away at the thigh meat and other large chunks of meat on the sides and back of the chicken.  

I like to put all of this meat in yet another separate pile on the cutting board.  

When all the dark meat from the thighs and other areas are picked clean, you should pretty much be left with just some chicken bones and other not quite as edible parts.  

You can toss these parts if you like, but they can also be saved and made into a wonderful chicken broth another time. I often use some of the chicken to make these No-Fry Chicken Croquettes. 

 

 

Take the time to separate the chicken dark meat as well as other chicken scraps on the cutting board.  

I take a large chef's knife and chop all that meat down into very fine, tiny bits of chicken. 

My favorite chef knife is made by Anvil and Hammer.

I love it because I can keep it insanely sharp using my WorkSharp E5 kitchen sharpener and ceramic honing rod.

It holds an edge like a mountain goat in Glacier National Park and makes mise-en-place a breeze!

By doing this, the meat gets a more uniform texture. While I'm chopping, I can pick out any undesirable bits of fat or anything I do not feel like adding to my dish.

 

 

 

Assembling the chicken salad is simple

 

With the chicken dark meat all chopped up finely its time to slice the breast meat.

Take the larger breast pieces and cut them into much larger chunks.

This not only showcases them better but it makes for some large and delicious bites.

By now, I usually already know which direction I want to go in with the chicken for the evening's dish. Tonight, it turned into a yummy rotisserie chicken salad with pecans for some crunch. 

 

 

 

 

This evening's chicken dinner salad will remain pretty simple.  

Trying to keep the dish a bit lower in carbohydrates, I weigh out 2 oz of pecans for the dish. It's about a 1 oz serving of pecans for each of us.

 

 

 

The main ingredients go into a mixing bowl and it gets an incorporating stir binding all the ingredients together.  

Add a few turns of the pepper mill, a pinch of dried dill, and a splash of hot sauce to the chicken.

Now this quick and easy chicken salad is a few stirs away from the dinner table.

 

 

Rotisserie Chicken and Pecan Salad with Roasted Asparagus

 

Roasted Prosciutto Asparagus makes a delicious side to this dish

 

One of my favorite side dishes is roasted Proscuitto asparagus. 

Look for asparagus which is about the thickness of a pencil. I find the more svelte asparagus stalks to be much more delicious than thicker ones.

Prepare the roasted Proscuitto asparagus by washing it and patty dry.

Instead of messing around with odd bend-and-break techniques, simply cut the bottom third of the asparagus off. 

You can use the asparagus bottoms in a quiche or soup, but I like to chop them small and use it in a stir fry.

Prosciutto is a delicate slice of cured meat. 

It's thinly sliced and has a gorgeous flavor both sweet and salty.

Prosciutto often has a natural striation within the meat which allows you to separate it into two or more long strips.  If you can't separate the Prosciutto into strips use a knife and cut it lengthwise into long strips.

Starting close to the tip, wrap the prosciutto tightly around the asparagus. Place the wrapped asparagus on a baking tray and roast at 400F for 15 minutes. 

The roasted asparagus will be perfectly cooked. The Prosciutto gets slightly rendered and adds a bit of texture to the asparagus.

This is a very quick, easy, and delicious way to make a fast dinner.  

Less than half of the chicken was used making this dish. Leftovers yielded a few more dishes later in the week and they are often a blank canvas. 

Here, I choose to add pecans and mayonnaise to the salad. But the possibilities are limitless for what you can create with a rotisserie bird from the market.  

I encourage you to experiment.  Or are you chicken?

 

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