Rotisserie Chickens For Fast Simple Dinners & How to Buy Them Cheap

It’s Monday night at 6:10, your spouse is running late, you had a wanna-hide-in-the-covers day at work, and you have tiny humans to feed. What are you going to do?? Hello, rotisserie chickens to the rescue.

Rotisserie Chickens For Fast Simple Dinners & How to Buy Them Cheap

All of the grocery and box stores are keeping rotisserie chickens on hand these days.  My kids LOVE them. They always ask for more.  As far as simple goes, it does not get much easier.  The stores in my state are only allowed to keep them out for four hours.  Some stores discount them immediately.  Some stores toss them (oh the horror!), and others refrigerate all of them from the day and put them out with a discounted price at one time.  It is worth a phone call to your preferred store to find out their policy.

Thankfully, my local big box store puts them all out in the mornings.  They were tossing them until someone found out and wrote a rather heated letter to management.  Ever since they collect them during the day and put them out the next morning.  

I bought these the other morning.  I got five chickens for 11.75!!  Once I got them home, I spent a little time to pull all of the meat off of the chickens.  Once I pulled all five, I had just over five pounds of meat.  Then, I divided them into family size servings and a few smaller ones for my lunches.  I used my Food Saver to vacuum pack them and I tossed them in the freezer.  I ended up with eight or so packs of chicken.

We eat the chicken just plain, make chicken tacos, chicken spaghetti, chicken salad, and many other dishes.

Steam-able Veggies

I had that Monday last week. I pulled out a pack of chicken, threw it in the sink with some warm water, and let my littles choose their favorite steam-able veggies.  The steam-able bags went in the microwave and in 15 minutes, we had dinner!!

Have you tried those steam in bag veggies yet? Total game changer at my house.  The kids get to pick a few when we are at the grocery store.  They feel so proud when we eat them.  Beware of the ones that have sauce or seasoning already on them. Those extra ingredients come with extra additives and calories.  I would love to always cook our vegetables from fresh, but sometimes life is just busy.  This is the best way I have come up with to keep them in the mix easily.  We also get to try some that we would not normally try since they are relatively inexpensive and easy to cook.  Turns out my whole family loves brussel sprouts! Who knew? They get such a bad reputation for no reason!

What is your favorite “get dinner on the table pronto” tip?

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