Healthier eating doesn’t getting any easier than cooking your own rotisserie chicken
With the calendar inching closer and closer to spring and summer, it may be time to check in with your New Year healthier eating resolutions. Have you gone back to old habits? Do you find yourself grabbing a quick bite to eat at a drive-thru window more often than you would like to admit? Do you eat a lot of chicken and fish because they are healthy options, but find yourself getting bored with your lunches and dinners?
If you’ve committed to making a change toward a healthy and fit lifestyle, then you are well aware that the transformation is not always an easy one. There are definitely challenges – and temptations – along the way.
The good news is that you are not alone. As people across the country switch to leaner proteins, less sugar options and lower fat dairy, food industries have adapted, too. You see more soda companies offering smaller sizes and more zero sugar flavors, for example. Entire aisles at the grocery store have evolved to offer more organic and gluten-free selections.
Well, kitchen appliance manufacturers also follow trends and have picked up on the fact that consumers not only want fresh, healthful food, they want healthier ways to prepare it at home themselves.
We all know that chicken is a good choice as a lean protein. However, you can only consume so many grilled and baked chickens before you start to dream about a nice, big, juicy burger, right?
Have you ever thought about preparing a rotisserie chicken instead? There’s a reason why those golden brown birds are cooked near the front of nearly every grocery store around the dinner hour – rotisserie chickens are juicy, healthy, versatile and flavorful. Let’s take a look at those four benefits are little closer.
Rotisserie chickens are juicy. Because they are rotated, the whole bird cooks nice and evenly, resulting in a rotisserie chicken that is moist and tender. Unlike a whole chicken roasted in the oven at home or left to languish in the slow cooker all day, there are no parts that are overcooked, undercooked or burnt.
There are machines that let you recreate the grocery store experience at home, but these tend to be on the expensive side and take up a whole lot of room on the kitchen counter.
That’s why we were thrilled recently to find a real gem – a non-electric self-rotating rotisserie that puts healthy deliciousness within reach any day of the week.Called the ROTO-Q 360, it conveniently and efficiently cooks rotisserie chicken right in your oven – without any fuel, power or gas. It even folds down to fit into a drawer and can easy be assembled in just three steps:
- Pop up the ends of the base
- Lock on the spit
- Turn the wheels on the side
Rotisserie chickens are healthier. Did you know that rotisserie chickens have 90 percent less fat than those prepared using other traditional methods, such a roasting, sautéing and frying? It makes sense because sautéing and frying involve different types of oil or lard and roasted chickens often have other ingredients and flavorings added, such as bacon, that help keep the chicken moist but add more calories than needed.
There’s even been a lot of news circulated lately that store-bought rotisserie isn’t as healthy as once thought due to injections of fat and sodium-laden broth that are added to keep the chicken as juicy as possible.
When you prepare a rotisserie at home, like with the ROTO-Q 360, you are charge of what ingredients are added for flavor without any hidden surprises.
Rotisserie chickens are versatile. Cooking a whole chicken instead of pieces like breasts, wings and thighs is cheaper because a butcher doesn’t have to be involved in the processing.
However, chicken pieces typically take less time to cook. A whole roasted chicken, depending on the size, will take a good couple of hours to cook. Prepared in the ROTO-Q 360, that same chicken will take 30 percent less time.
Once you invest in the time to cook a whole chicken, you have leftover meat for one or two additional meals, making rotisserie not only an economical choice, but a time-saving one as well.
After dinner, while the chicken is still warm, remove all the leftover meat from the bone. If you use the ROTO-Q 360, the meat should just slide right off. Slice, dice or cut into strips as your recipe calls for and either refrigerate or freeze until ready to use.
Use the leftover meat to make enchiladas, tacos, pot pie, chicken and dumplings, chicken salad, empanadas, ravioli, barbecue chicken salad or in any recipe that calls for cooked chicken.
Once the meat and carcass is removed from the ROTO-Q 360, simply disassemble the appliance and pop the pieces in the dishwasher or sink to wash. Roasting pans can take a lot of elbow grease to scrub clean.
Rotisserie chickens are flavorful. Chances are you find plain, unseasoned, well, a little boring. With a rotisserie chicken at home, you are in charge of seasonings and can take that chicken in all sorts of different directions.
I personally like a good multi-seasoning, like McCormick’s Montreal Steak Seasoning (yes, it’s absolutely delicious on chicken, too). You can combine your own seasoning blend to suit your family’s unique tastes or simply add a few quick dashes of salt and pepper.
If you want to season the inside, consider placing half of lemon, half an onion or a few sprigs of rosemary in the cavity of the bird before placing it on the rotisserie spit.
I have to tell confess, I cook a rotisserie chicken about once a week. I mix up the flavorings to keep it fresh and not stale, but it is certainly a dinner staple in our house. I also really love the idea behind the ROTO-Q 360. If you do to, I invite you to visit www.rotoq360.com/ to learn more.
