With the way we’ve been buying takeout, here are some creative ways to cook leftover chicken into new and yummy dishes.

Andok’s, Chooks-to-Go, Baliwag, Kenny Rogers, S&R, Peri-Peri — we’ve probably tried every roast or grilled chicken recipe out there during this pandemic since cooking’s exhausting. And when we’re burned out from work, takeout meals are the way to go. Unfortunately, we have a new problem: the fridge is so full of leftover chicken. But kids wouldn’t want to eat the same recipe again so, we figured out a few easy, creative, and fun ways to cook leftover chicken.

1. Roast Chicken Sandwich

Sandwich Night’s one creative and fun way to get kids to eat their veggies. Since kids love building through LEGO, they’ll probably love building a sandwich too. All it takes is some mayonnaise, relish, diced celery, and toss. For some, they’d like to add a tang by making aioli garlic mayo sauce by mixing lemon juice (or half a calamansi) and some crushed garlic. Then, some sliced tomatoes and white onions. And if your kids are cheese monsters, you can toast some cheese on top of the bread for that extra creamy texture.

Recommended chicken recipes to use for this recipe are S&R, Kenny Rogers, and Chooks-to-Go.

2. Chicken Sisig

Your older kids (especially your college kids) are probably missing the flavor of Sisig Hooray — a sisig restaurant famous among college kids along UP, Ateneo, and La Salle. Although we’re not too sure about the special sauce they use, it does have the base ingredients of soy sauce and mayonnaise. What some even do is that they use the chili oil they get from Chinese takeout to sautee the garlic, onion, and minced chicken to make it slightly spiced up. It’ll also take out the annoying part of biting into the bitter siling haba.

Since sisig is a Filipino recipe, we suggest using a roast chicken with a more Philippine flavor like Andok’s, Baliwag, Chickey’s Whole Inasal, Bacolod Inasal, or Mang Inasal.

3. Chicken Sopas

Since it’s a soup-type dish, you’ll need chicken that doesn’t have much marinade on the meat. Jollibee Chicken’s a surefire good addition to the soup. Shakey’s and McDonald’s can be also especially if you want to stay away from the salt since the skin’s already salty. Kenny Rogers is okay too for this recipe.

On a rainy day, nothing beats a warm bowl of creamy chicken sopas. With some macaroni elbows, minced carrots, mushrooms, onion, and garlic, you can take the leftover chicken in your fridge and add it in. It uses the whole chicken; the chicken bones can serve as a flavor for the broth and the chicken meat will be the bits. It looks like a new meal but it’s actually using leftovers. Plus, we’re sure the kids would love the macaroni elbow noodles in the soup. If you have fried chicken, you can stick them in the toaster and use the skin as crunchy bits on top!

4. BBQ Chicken Pita Pizza

Another leftover that’s probably clogging up the fridge is the sauces from every restaurant ever. Especially if your kids love the Chicken Nuggets from McDonald’s, they’ll probably have some leftover sauce. We can use the leftover chicken and chop it up before tossing it with the BBQ sauce. Add some tomato sauce, onions, mushrooms, and some greens to make a pizza. You can even use the Spinach Pita Wraps as the pizza dough so that the vegetables are non-negotiable.

BBQ Chicken Pita Pizza needs more smoky recipes so Chooks-to-Go has a Sriracha recipe. Peri-Peri Chicken has the Picante marinade plus their sauces are a good cheat like the Garlic Brew or the Mesquite BBQ.

5. Golden Egg Chicken Fried Rice

The kids are probably familiar with good ‘ol Uncle Roger and that’s probably why they’re asking for egg-fried rice. Chicken’s a part of egg-fried rice but since we have leftovers, we can skip the whole cleaning and cooking process. All we need to do is dice up the leftover chicken, make some scallion oil, mince some garlic and onion, and toss it with the leftover rice and egg for a Golden Egg Chicken Fried Rice. For that Korean bite, there’s some Kimchi and Gojuchang you can buy from your local Korean grocery store.

Baliwag, Kenny Rogers, and Andok’s are pretty good chicken recipes to mix for the Golden Egg Fried Rice.

6. Chicken Dorito Salad

Pancake House used to have Taco Salad but if you’re not in the mood to toast taco shells, Doritos are a good substitute. And, it’s another easy way for kids to eat veggies. All it takes is a bag of BBQ-flavored Doritos, some shredded lettuce, chopped tomatoes, and diced leftover chicken. The sauce can be a Ketchup-Perrins-Tabasco mix to give that extra kick. If the lettuce isn’t enough, some arugula ought to kick up the flavor.

For this one, you’ll also need more smoky chicken recipes so Chooks-to-Go, Peri-Peri, and Señor Pollo are good choices.

7. Chicken Alfredo Pasta

Pasta always receives thumbs up with kids especially if you can make Alfredo Pasta. Alfredo Pasta’s a simple cream sauce but we can add all sorts of cheese to give it a light salty flavor. If there are leftover canned mushrooms, you can use it also to add more “meat” to the pasta. Toss it with some basil and pepper, some leftover sliced roast chicken and you’ll have yourself a loveable Chicken Alfredo Pasta. For this one, you can use either Kenny Rogers or S&R chicken.

8. Chicken Canape

No need to buy a baguette for this one. We’ve even done this with whole wheat Gardenia bread for the bread. The beauty of Chicken Canape is that it’s bite-sized and perfect for a Netflix binge. The kids would also appreciate this especially when they’re eating during online classes. It’ll take some toasting and cutting but mixing it up with some shredded chicken, Korean Gojuchang, and a dab of mayonnaise make it a good treat. This one’s pretty flexible in terms of what kind of roast chicken to use since Gojuchang’s got a pretty strong flavor. And if your kids have leather soles for tongues, they’ll definitely have a kick out of this one.

9. Cheesy Chicken Quesadilla

Instead of having your kids randomly sticking their hands into the bags of cheese in the fridge whenever they’re hungry, why not make a quesadilla instead? There are different kinds of pita wrap from Spinach, Whole Wheat, to the regular stuff which go well with all sorts of cheese and tomato sauce. What better way to use roast chicken than that? S&R Chicken or Chooks-To-Go works well with this recipe. And if you don’t want to open a new bag of tomato sauce, you can use the tomato ketchup you get from your burger takeouts instead since it’s a little more acidic than sweet.

10. Chicken Teriyaki

If your kids loved eating in Teriyaki Boy before the pandemic hit then, you can resurrect their favorite dish with just some soy sauce, a bottle of Teriyaki sauce, sesame oil, and a dash of rice vinegar to satisfy their craving. Then, you can toss it up with some plain rice and garnish it with some sesame seeds. Although if sesame seeds aren’t available, Chia Seeds are okay too to give your kids those extra omega-3 fats and extra nutrients they don’t often get. You can even tell them it’s just the fancy black sesame seeds too.

Leftover Chicken: The ever-flexible ingredient for a pandemic cook

We’ve all had to flex our culinary muscles and brains over this pandemic especially with restaurants not always being open to alfresco dining. And cost-wise, the most practical one to buy is a roast chicken since it’s around PHP 200.00 ~ PHP 350.00 pesos for a whole chicken. That already feeds the whole family then we just add rice when we’re not in the mood to cook. With this, you’ll be able to clean up your fridge and spend less time at the same time. Bon appétit!