Some of our most favorite wraps and sandwiches use diced chicken as a main ingredient. We’ve struggled with this because home cooked chicken gets a leftover taste almost immediately, making it not the best ingredient the next day. We have used pre-cooked chicken for our convenience (and yours) when we create fun new sandwiches, but the price tag and sodium are sky-high. Rotisserie chicken also works well, but we’ve been hoping to find something that would work even better. Guess what! We finally found a new favorite way to make any sandwich requiring diced chicken.
We’re committed to supporting the safe and humane raising of animals, and as such have been using organic chicken thighs (at half the price of the organic chicken breasts) when we make grilled chicken meals. Since thighs are fattier than breasts, they are moister and don’t require a marinade. Every time we grill chicken, we add an extra package to the grill to use later in wraps and sandwiches. Immediately after dinner, we dice the extra chicken, place it on a baking sheet and pop it into the freezer. Later that evening, we take the chicken off the tray and slide it into a freezer bag. The result: small pieces of diced chicken that you may remove from the freezer in any amount you like.
How do you work with it for lunch? Simply take out what you need: we find a kitchen scale really handy for this. Thaw it in the microwave and use it just like fresh chicken in your chicken salad recipe, wrap or sandwich.
Why are we so excited? For starters, it is always available and ready to use. Simply plan ahead with your grilling and you’ll have chicken anytime you need it. Secondly, let’s take a quick look at sodium levels for the different options: you’ll see that the home-grilled, flash-frozen meat really comes out on top. If you are interested in keeping fat content lower, opt for breasts. However, you may need to marinate them to keep more moisture locked in.
| Type of Meat | Sodium (mg) | % Sodium | Fat (g) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Perdue Shortcuts | 460 | 19 | 2 |
| Grilled Chicken Thighs | 75 | 3 | 8 |
| Grilled Chicken Breasts | 25 | 1 | .5 |
More about Amy and Scott Dawson, creators of Lunchtaker.com: One of our core focuses is on nutrition and fitness. Our children both attended a parent cooperative pre-school where the morning snack was as healthy as possible, and our family liked the opportunities for new foods that arose in pre-school. As our children go through grade school, we are focusing on continuing the trend of ensuring we feed ourselves a variety of foods, all good for our bodies... read more...
Posted Saturday, May 22nd, 2010 at 6:22 pm and filed under How-To, Techniques. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Jenny, Thanks for your comment. We find that thawing the chicken in the microwave on defrost just briefly (till mostly thawed) works beautifully. It doesn’t get that horrible rubbery taste and smell and is perfect for wraps for lunch. If you leave it frozen, it should definitely thaw by lunchtime though. We don’t because we like the idea that we know it is ready to eat when it is packed and won’t freeze the lettuce or other veggies it is placed next to. Good luck with it and have fun with combinations and ideas. If you come up with anything you really like, post it to share on the site.
This sounds like a great idea, but does the thawed or reheated chicken not come out tasting funky because of the microwaving? Anytime I have tried to microwave chicken it turns into something akin to rubber or has an offensive smell because of the sulfur that is released during the process. If you have found ways around this, I’d love to hear them. Maybe if you pack it in a lunch bag in the morning it is thawed by lunchtime?