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Part of what my husband and I strive to do in our kitchen is to minimize our food waste. We actually rarely throw anything away. An important piece to this, though, is knowing how to use leftovers and find creative ways to reinvent them – no one likes to eat the same thing over and over. Today’s feature for reinvented leftovers includes BBQ chicken!
My husband is actually a bit better at this than I am – I always joke that he should go compete on Food Network’s Chopped. I sometimes struggle to think outside the box as much, especially when the leftover randomness just doesn’t seem to go together at all.
This week, though, I got lucky and we had just the right ingredients left in just the right amounts to make a delicious BBQ chicken salad for two for a quick and easy weeknight dinner.
We had four pieces of BBQ chicken left from earlier in the week, two ears of sweet corn, three kinds of salad greens, one fresh local tomato, some sweet peppers and onions, and a few tablespoons of some pickled radishes I had made earlier in the week for some fish tacos.
(The way we made the chicken you see above was on our Masterbuilt electric smoker. All smokers seem to cook a bit differently, but ours was at 225 degrees for about 3 hours.
One other leftover night creation I shared on the blog was my Loaded Potato Nachos. I’m planning to share our leftover night creations with you a bit more often. Let’s help spread creativity in the kitchen, reinvent those leftovers, and keep perfectly good food out of the trash!
BBQ Chicken Salad
Ingredients
The Salad
- 4 pieces BBQ chicken (thighs and/or legs)
- 1/2 tsp olive oil
- 3 mini sweet peppers, diced
- 1/2 small yellow onion, diced
- 2 ears fresh sweet corn, cooked and cut off the cob
- 4 handfuls salad greens (we used baby spinach, baby arugula, and romaine lettuce
- 1 small fresh tomato, diced
- black pepper, to taste
- 1/4 cup cheddar cheese, shredded
- 3 Tbsp ranch dressing
- 1 Tbsp BBQ sauce
- 1 Tbsp pickled radishes, optional * See below
Pickled Radishes
- 6-8 radishes, thinly sliced
- 3/4 cup white wine vinegar
- 1/4 cup water
- 1 tsp kosher salt
- 6 whole black peppercorns
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 tsp granulated sugar
- 1 tsp cumin
Instructions
The Salad
- In a stockpot, bring enough water to a boil for the two ears of corn. Put the corn into the pot and boil for about 10 minutes until done. Remove from water and set aside to cool. When cool, cut it off the cob.
- Debone the chicken meat, (you can opt to either discard the skin or use) and dice it into bite-size pieces.
- Preheat a cast-iron skillet with the olive oil. and saute the diced sweet pepper and yellow onion on medium heat. When done, turn heat to low and stir in the chicken pieces and the corn you cut off the cob. Stir to combine and heated through.
- For the salad dressing, mix the ranch dressing with the BBQ sauce and voila - BBQ Ranch Dressing. Sometimes I make my own ranch, sometimes I don't. Whatever you do is fine.
- Assemble your salad! Put the mixed greens on two plates. Top with the chicken, corn, and onion/pepper mixture. Toss the diced tomato on, and put black pepper over salad. Top with shredded cheddar cheese, BBQ ranch dressing, and pickled radishes.
Pickled Radishes
- Thinly slice the radishes and place them in a glass bowl or jar. Add all of the other ingredients in a saucepan and heat through - mainly just to dissolve the sugar and kickstart the black pepper and garlic infusion process. Refrigerate for at least a few hours before eating, and eat within a few days. Remove black peppercorns prior to serving. These are great on fish tacos, salad, hot dogs, and more!
