Why make curries etc out of precooked chicken?

Mrs_Arcanum

bigmuffins wrote: »

Hi Pink and everyone!
Thanks for your replies!

BitterAndTwisted: I am all for being crafty & thrifty, my main point is the taste - when you cook a curry the spices get into the meat and flavour it, if you have precooked meat you can't get the same depth of flavour as the meat is already cooked and is only reheated, just a coating of sauce really? To me this is not seem as if it will be a nice curry as I can't see that the time saved compensates for the lack of flavour?

Pink-winged: We buy whole chickens too as is cheaper but then cut them up to smaller pieces (or ask butcher to do it for us) and freeze in small packs. Then what I do to save time is to make the basic sauce and store in fridge or freezer and then just add the raw chicken to it - cooks quickly and is tasty.

Haven't tried adding precooked meat to the sauce though. The only time was with the pasta sauce and the result was rather dry meat, which no-one liked so I haven't done it again.

I was looking through recipe threads recently and saw the number of rubber chicken ones and wondered if I had missed something useful! Am happy to try timesaving and moneysaving methods but I know my family won't eat rubber tasting chicken! :rotfl:So unless I can get round that it wouldn't be :money:
We love roast chicken dinners too but don't have much in the way of leftovers! I have tried sandwiches with leftover meat on several occasions - with roast veggies, with sweetcorn and salad and mayonnaise (not all in same sarnie! )and while Mum and I ate them quite happily, no-one else touched theirs! I know it wasn't the chicken cos it was all gobbled up pretty quick when hot!

So unless anyone knows where I am going wrong, I am going to have to stick with raw chicken.

Slow cookers - I got a slow cooker after reading about them here and thinking it would save me time , have hot meals ready of an evening while we got on with other things but again the meat didn't taste nice - tasted 'mushy' and boiled ?
I am going to try again and really brown meat first - think the first time maybe I didn't brown enough and added too much liquid.

I have also tried making a stock with the carcass and it tasted of:
cooked chicken, rather than chicken ifyswim, different to the stock
made with raw bones?

Just thought, how do you all roast your chickens? We usually add black pepper, garlic and lemon marinade or sometimes more spicier ones - maybe this is why I haven't got good result?


:cool:

Worth ensuring your chicken is not over cooked in the first place. Did ours today with lemon wedges & parsley in the cavity, bacon over the meat and some butter under the breast skin. Plus covered with foil (all but the last 30 minutes) and had water under the rack.

However you are correct where curries/spicy food is concerned. The permeation of flavours is worth starting from scratch. Something like a risotto, pasta sauce or chicken pie do not need this flavour boost. So just chucking the chicken meat in at the last minute to heat through is enough. The important part is not to actually cook the chicken meat again, just warm through.

gravitytolls

Sublime wrote: »

The other good thing about cooking a whole bird in the slow cooker, is that it remains very moist (especially the thighs), so is fine when reheated in a curry.

Falls off the bone too, not a scrap wasted.

If there's not enough left for a curry meal for us all (I cook two chickens), I mix the cold chicken with flavoured mayo ~ mustard, curry etc. ~ for lunches.

beemuzed

There's usually just the two of us and we like a roast, so there is always plenty left. As others have said, it's a case of reheating rather than re-cooking. We generally get two extra meals plus the carcass for stock for soup - but if there were more of us it'd get eaten more quickly!

seraphina

I hate slow cookers - and I'm not the only one! Other people have the same complaints that you do about them so you might want to persevere with the oven roasting first.

Penelope_Penguin

bigmuffins wrote: »

BitterAndTwisted: I am all for being crafty & thrifty, my main point is the taste - when you cook a curry the spices get into the meat and flavour it, if you have precooked meat you can't get the same depth of flavour as the meat is already cooked and is only reheated, just a coating of sauce really?

Hi, Bigmuffins :beer: Whenever we cook a whole chiken we have leftovers, which I sometimes make into curry. Making curry is a way of using up the leftovers, not as first intent, IYSWIM

You've got me salivating over a freshly made curry now, so I'm off to buy chicken pieces from the butcher :T

What's your favourite recipe, please

purpleivy

cooking-mama wrote: »

I like to cook a whole chicken,but not reheat the leftovers,tho i will boil up the carcass and chicken wings to make chicken and rice soup,other than that there is usualy only a wee drop meat left for a couple of sandwiches or a leg for 1 cold chicken leg salad lunch the next day.
Altho im not into "rubber" chicken I can understand why some are...altho I admit im amazed when people get meals into double figures from 1 chicken,makes me feel guilty/greedy sometimes that we only get 1 main meal,an odd lunch and soup from ours;)

I do sometimes make quite a bit out of a chicken, but I do wonder about the nutritional value of each meal if it's stretched too thinly.!

triticale

I have to say I don't like curries made with previously cooked meat. Not just the dryness, but it also tastes 'wrong' to me (roast chicken especially has a very distinctive flavour)

Pies, stews and soups are fine though.

squeaky

purpleivy wrote: »

I do sometimes make quite a bit out of a chicken, but I do wonder about the nutritional value of each meal if it's stretched too thinly.!

That's really going to depend on what you stretch it with, isn't it?

For instance, a few bits of chicken in a pita slice loaded with lots of salad should be fine. Yes/no?

Ten grams of chicken in 400 grams of pastry wouldn't be quite so good

You don't have to give up nutrition when padding. I often pad chicken curry with mushroom btw. Added part way through cooking so they don't go all shrunken and soggy - and it's sometimes hard to tell the difference, honest.

valk_scot

Cooked chicken isn't so good in made from scratch curry, no, but it's very handy if you've got ten minutes to make dinner, some cooked chicken in the fridge and a jar/tin of ready made curry sauce in the cupboard. Or you can use cooked chicken in dishes like stir fry, pasta sauces, quiches and pies, coronation chicken, rice salad, sandwiches, salad...oh, lots of things. If I need cooked chicken for a dish I'm not going to cook it specially, I'm going to cook it as part of a roast chicken dish. If you normally eat an entire chicken for a roast meal, buy a bigger chicken to get leftovers? I cooked a massive 6lb bird yesterday and not only is the meat in more mature birds a lot tastier anyway, the two breasts fed four of us no problem, with seconds. We'll eat most of the rest as chicken in gravy again tonight but there will be a ton of scraps for stir fry tomorrow, plus sandwich fillings (Chicken + sweetcorn + mayo) plus soup. And I only had to do the main cooking once plus, of course, I filled up the oven space with other things.

Your lot sound too fussy for their own socks tbh, if they won't eat home made chicken sandwich fillers. Presumably you don't normally cook chicken fresh just for sandwich fillers anyway (?) so what do they prefer? Store bought? Not very economical tbh!

As a general tip, btw, breast meat is always drier when reheated so eat that as the roast meat and save the leg and wing meat plus other bits and bobs for use in the second meal. It will be far more moist and the more robust meat will reheat better without going wooly. For sandwich filling though breast meat is better.

valk_scot

bigmuffins wrote: »

Just thought, how do you all roast your chickens? We usually add black pepper, garlic and lemon marinade or sometimes more spicier ones - maybe this is why I haven't got good result?

I put two bits of bacon over the breast, to keep the meat there from drying out while roasting. Makes a lovely flavour in the gravy and you can crumble the bacon into your sandwich filling after, if the kids don't snaffle it first. I don't add extra fat or flavourings as we all hate the skin of chicken so outside flavourings would be wasted, plus this makes it less useful for stock etc.