10 Quick Recipes To Make With Costco's $5 Rotisserie Chicken (2024)

FAQs

How to enhance Costco rotisserie chicken? ›

Use your favorite preserves, chutney, barbecue sauce, or build your own thick and sticky concoction to coat the bird with. Think honey and lemon or brown sugar and soy sauce; just be mindful of how much salt the glaze contains as most store-bought rotisserie chickens are already seasoned with salt.

Smith v. Vachris: The Costco Lawsuit

The shareholders brought a derivative suit against Costco executives for making Costco neglect and abandon chickens. The complaint followed a 2021 undercover investigation revealing that Costco's chickens are bred to grow so fast that many can't stand under their own weight.

Storage. If you choose to refrigerate a hot rotisserie chicken once you bring it home, remove the meat and store it in a shallow container so it can cool quickly. When the chicken pieces are cool, cover the container or put the meat into sealable plastic bags until you're ready to use the chicken.

It's amazing what a difference this makes, even if you're just reheating the chicken for a few minutes in the oven! The great thing is that if you're really in a pinch, you can even just drizzle a bit of lemon juice, and then sprinkle in some garlic powder and dried rosemary. It still makes a big difference!

One rotisserie chicken equals about 4 cups of shredded chicken, both white and dark meat (skin not included). Typically, the average chicken would mean about 12 ounces of light meat and 8 ounces of dark meat (skin not included), which totals to about 1,037 calories.

But the suit alleges that Costco intentionally breeds these broilers too large in to stand on their own in factory farms and the “disabled birds slowly die from hunger, injury and illness.” It follows allegations from another animal rights group about Costco's treatment of its chickens.

Costco Raises its Own Chickens

To cut costs, Costco opened its own 400,000-square-foot poultry processing plant in Nebraska in 2019. The plant enables the company to manage the chickens from farm to production and ensures that the birds are grown to the correct size, typically around 3 pounds.

Rotisserie chicken lasts for up to four days if cooked and stored correctly. Keep the chicken in an airtight container or zip-top bag, and do not consume leftover chicken if left at room temperature for an extended period of time (more than two hours).

I am sharing how I take one Costco Rotisserie Chicken and turn it into 5 meals for my husband and me. That's FIVE MEALS, not five servings! Plus, I use my InstantPot to make a delicious chicken soup from the bones, so technically that's SIX meals! And no, they aren't chintzy, starvation diet-sized meals.

How many meals can I make with one rotisserie chicken? ›

You can easily make 5 meals out of one rotisserie chicken from the store. A rotisserie chicken is perfect for meal planning and I think you'll love that these meals come together quickly too.

1 Chicken = 5 Meals (All gluten free, by the way!)

This would go well served over rice or mashed white or sweet potatoes! I'd love to hear about your ideas of how to stretch a whole chicken and some of your favorite chicken dishes!

The average Costco rotisserie chicken weighs three pounds fully cooked. The birds raised for Costco are broiler chickens who have been genetically modified through breeding to grow very large, very quickly. About 100 years ago in 1925, chickens lived for 112 days before being slaughtered at 2.5 pounds.

The American Heart Association recommends eating no more than 13g of saturated fat per day—meaning a small serving of rotisserie chicken contains about 23% of your recommended daily intake. Eating saturated fat is shown to increase LDL cholesterol, which in turn increases the risk of heart disease.

He said that rotisserie chicken, prone to dryness in the preparation stage, is often injected by many poultry suppliers with the chemical compound to keep them extra juicy. Indeed, Costco's rotisserie chickens include phosphate among a laundry list of other ingredients with very long names.

Many of the ingredients found on the label of a Costco rotisserie chicken are injected into the flesh of the bird. This is typically done to add flavor.

It's worth noting that Costco calls the dish "Seasoned Rotisserie Chicken" and has the "seasoning" ingredients listed on the label: salt, sodium phosphates, hydrolyzed casein, modified cornstarch, sugar, dextrose, chicken broth, isolated soy protein lecithin and mono-and-diglycerides.

One of the key secrets to achieving juicy and flavorful rotisserie chicken lies in the art of brining. Brining involves soaking the chicken in a saltwater solution infused with herbs, spices and aromatics. This process not only enhances moisture retention but also imparts depth of flavor to the meat.