If you are in a pinch and do not have time to cook a whole bird for your family or friends, a rotisserie chicken is both a convenient and inexpensive way to get protein on the table.
But as with any cooked food, there are some potential drawbacks, depending on where you buy it. For example, some major grocery stores’ own brands of rotisserie chicken are packaged in sodium. Some are even injected with a solution (which helps keep the meat soft and moist) with sugar.
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This is not to say that a rotisserie chicken is a bad choice. Actually, Sammi Haber Brondo, MS, RD and author of The essential vegetable cookbook, suggests that How a rotisserie chicken is cooked can be healthier than some other cooking methods.
“Rotisserie chicken is basically seasoned and then spit in the oven for a few hours,” she says. “Unlike other cooking methods, such as frying or deep frying, rotisserie chicken does not add excess fat to the chicken, but still gives a moist result.“
When it comes to choosing the very “best” rotisserie chicken, Brondo says that you really can not go wrong and adds that the differences between most types of rotisserie chicken are quite minimal and insignificant.
Look for the freshest ones in the grocery store, which may be the ones hidden towards the back. It is also best to eat the roasted bird shortly after you buy it. This is because rotisserie chicken often has a shorter shelf life due to it sitting under heat lamps all day.
“If a store has left the chicken under the heat lamp for too long, it can dry out,” she says.
Alternatively, if you leave the chicken in the fridge for a few days, you will notice that this also makes the meat dry.
Another advantage of rotisserie chicken is that it is very versatile. There are so many ways you can incorporate this type of chicken into a healthy meal.
“You can cut it up and put it on top of a salad, serve it with roasted vegetables and a grain or, when it starts to dry out, chop it and use it to make chicken salad,” she says. Or you can even try one of our 21+ best healthy rotisserie chicken recipes!
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