Rabbit Food for Lions
Using Supermarket Shortcuts that don’t insult your taste buds, waistline or intelligence

So Kevin stumbled upon hickory-smoked rotisserie chicken in the supermarket, and free-wheeling creativity went on its merry way.

We devised two recipes – one Asian, and one straight from Kevin’s Italian-American heritage – to show how versatile a recipe tool these foods can be. And there’s much to learn from these – both conceptually and practically. So let’s hit it.

Highbrow and Lowbrow cooking, Rabbit Food for Lions Style

Convenience supermarket foods are not by definition a cooking cop-out. You’ll hear foodies, cooks and cookbook reviewers take their potshots at home cooking convenience tools or even complicated high-end cooks as is fashionable.

But when your priority is interesting healthful cooking and not The State of How Everyone Should Eat In a Perfect Epicurean World, the highbrow/lowbrow distinctions just aren’t relevant.

To make Rabbit Food for Lions, we play both sides against the middle in the whole gourmand/convenience cooking divide. In our case, we look for what tools are available, or how you can make existing tools work in your favor to make your food something incredible, inspiring even.

Convenience foods save time and money, but the most compelling advantage is they can bolster flavor profiles otherwise difficult to implement.

Enter the hickory chicken. Kevin and his mother wanted to recreate the classic ragu of Kevin’s fat-and-calorie laden childhood. Out of respect for their family memories and quality of food, the sauce demanded the smoky flavor of cured meat Kevin recalled.

The chicken came to the rescue. Picked and shredded, the hickory flavor bestow the ragu the necessary smokiness with little fat and the textural boost of chicken. Problem solved, with creativity and care.

Making Convenience Foods Work for You

You don’t just have to slice supermarket chicken and throw it on the plate. There’s a variety of uses for these foods beyond the traditional.

And that’s when supermarket convenience foods can be a boon.

• If you’re grabbing a supermarket chicken for later use, allow the meat to cool completely before picking the meat off. Beyond avoiding burning your hands, allowing the chicken to cool will also redistribute its natural juices into the meat. If you’re storing chicken in the fridge, waiting for the juices to settle back into the meat will avoid the meat drying out when you need it.

• If you’re one of those people that’s obsessed with the skin of a meat (where of course all the fat lies), make sure you’ve eaten before you pick the little guy apart. You’re chances of realizing that picking skin of a whole chicken and eating it is a gross and fattening habit are more likely when you’re full. It’s also easier to just remove the skin and throw it away first thing.

• If you haven’t made plans for your chicken in advance, diversify your knife techniques. Slice some chicken breast thinly for sandwiches, largely dice half a chicken breast for salads or burritos, and finely shred the remainder for quesadillas, chicken salad, omelet filling, quick additions to soups, etc. By pre-cutting the chicken in a variety of shapes, you also create them ready-made for a variety of uses. When you’re on a tight schedule later, the versatility will speed up your prep time later when it counts.

• Pay attention to the flavors! Mindful use of the chicken’s seasonings (BBQ-flavored, garlic/herb, lemon, Asian, hickory, etc.) is what can make a dish creative, tasty, fast and healthful. Throwing a BBQ flavored chicken into homemade egg drop soup might make a creative twist. It could also make a disaster. Experiment, but do so thoughtfully.

• Don’t throw away the carcass! Seasoned chicken bones are the secret value of supermarket rotisserie chicken – instant stock! Traditionally, chicken stock is made with boiling carrot, celery and Herbs de Provence, a blend of  thyme, savory, basil, fennel, lavender. But you can throw the bones in water for the simplest of broths — the advantage being you can adjust flavors for the dish you need – ginger, garlic and lemongrass for an Asian soup, fennel, thyme, garlic and lemon peel for a more Mediterranean effect, etc. If you don’t often hop between Asian, Italian, Latin flavors, you can make stock as usual, having it on hand.

Kevin DeMarco is a personal trainer and personal chef in North Carolina. He and Russ Lane are on a mission to bring invigorating health food to home kitchens, and use cooking as a way to redefine self-defeating relationships with food. Read more about our cooking philosophy, and learn more about us at the Team Second Helping page.