Polish Off A Rotisserie Chicken With This Shortcut Chicken And Dumplings

There's a lot to love about rotisserie chicken — besides the fact that it takes cooking out of the equation, meaning all you need to do is resist the temptation to eat it with your fingers on your way home from the store. While you can serve this protein with your favorite sides, there are also many ways to repurpose rotisserie chicken and turn it into something new — and, if you can believe it, something much more flavorful, too.

One easy way is to use the pre-cooked meat to give your chicken and dumplings recipe a facelift. Most recipes for this comforting dish require you to cook the chicken separately, but store-bought rotisserie chicken can be used as a flavorful and efficient substitute. Simply add your shredded or ½-inch cubes of chicken to the recipe after you've cooked the rest of the hard ingredients, like the mirepoix. You won't need to keep the skin on the bird (and it makes for a tasty snack while you're cooking), so be sure to strip it off when you're slicing up the chicken. Since the chicken is already cooked, you don't want to heat it to the point of disintegration. 

As for the dumplings, you can use whatever you have on-hand, whether that's store-bought gnocchi, biscuit dough, or your own homemade dumplings. Once it's left to simmer for a bit, you'll have a hearty, flavorful soup on your hands.

Using rotisserie chicken in your recipe is just the start of ways to upgrade this classic dish. For one, you can play with an array of spices to add flavor to your bowl.

Tarragon, thyme, and rosemary are excellent herbs to use, as they'll complement the flavors of both the vegetables and the rotisserie chicken. You can also grab some poultry seasoning to help drive home that savory flavor even more. 

You can also increase the creaminess and channel that chicken flavor by swapping some of the heavy cream for cream of chicken soup. Since the rotisserie chicken isn't cooked for too long (again, you'll want to prevent it from becoming chicken-flavored mush), you won't get the same development of flavor as you would if you cooked raw chicken in a pan and used the fat to flavor the rest of your soup. Cream of chicken at least adds robustness, and a little bit of meaty flavor, to your recipe.