On the third day of chicken leftovers, use the chicken to make a lazy-man/woman’s version of chicken paella. Paella pretty much is a Spanish dish cooked with rice, vegetables and meat or seafood. Ideally, if you have lots of time and fresh ingredients, you would cook the meat and vegetables first in a cast iron pan,throw in uncooked rice, add broth and let the whole thing boil down and simmer. That would allow the flavors of the ingredients to leech into the rice. This lazy version uses leftover chicken and cooked rice but takes about 20 minutes to make from start to finish. You can pretty much throw in any type of vegetables. Here are the ingredients that I used (and the ones that happened to be in my fridge):
Ingredients:
Shredded chicken
1 carrot diced
2 stalks of celery diced
1/2 c corn
1/2 c peas
1 small onion diced
1/2 chili pepper diced (optional)
1 can tomato paste
olives (optional)
3-4 cups of cooked rice1 tbsp oil
salt
pepper
Heat oil in skillet. Saute onions, carrots and celery until softened (covering skillet for a few minutes helps). Stir in corn, peas, olives and chili peppers.
Add the cooked rice. Stir in tomato paste, salt, and pepper until evenly coated. Finally, toss in the chicken.
But it’s not over…you can still use the carcass for chicken soup. Here’s the recipe:
Leftover Chicken Orzo Soup
Ingredients:
1 chicken carcass
2 carrots diced
4 celery stalks diced
1 onion diced
6 c watersalt
pepper
1 c orzo
Throw in chicken carcass (minus the wings and drumsticks), carrots, celery, and onions, water, salt and pepper into a crock pot. Leave it on high for 6-8 hours.
Afterward, the meat should have fallen off the bone. Remove the bone from the soup (use a slotted spoon to make the job easier). Add in the orzo and cook for another 30 minutes. Serve.