How to Improve Canned Chicken? 11 Ideas
Along with sliced bread, canned chicken is one of the most practical and delicious inventions and deserves special attention. With canned chicken, you skip the cooking part and jump directly onto the eating part without doing the work and cleaning the mess. Still, even the best ideas can do some tweaking. So, how to improve canned chicken?
Adding spices to the marinade, frying it, turning it into a dip, making a salad, stuffing, adding it to pasta, turning it into patties, or making chicken pot pie are all excellent ways to make your canned chicken taste better. You can also sauce it up or simply smear it with lemon and white vinegar.
Canned chicken is meant for wide consumption, so it can’t be too flavorful, as you can add flavor, but you cannot take it away. Even though canned chicken is delicious as it is, and you can eat it straight from the can, it may sometimes taste a little bland to you, especially if you like playfulness in your food. So, in the following paragraphs, I will share some tips on how you can make your canned chicken taste better.
Spice up the Marinade
Although canned chicken has already been marinated, you can experiment and add spices to improve the flavor of your canned chicken. You can add spices directly into the can and let the canned chicken marinate in the existing juices, or take it out of the can and marinate it on a separate plate.
A balsamic vinegar, balsamic cream, and honey marinade are excellent for canned chicken. Add some salt, pepper, and herbal spices to the mixture and let your canned chicken marinate for a few hours in the fridge absorbing the flavors.
Another great canned chicken marinade is olive oil, lemon juice, and garlic. Herbal spices don’t go so well here, but salt and pepper do great in this combination.
In essence, choose your favorite spices and mix them with either oil or vinegar (honey is welcome, too), and let your canned chicken marinate.
Fry It
The whole point of canned chicken is to rid you of the cooking part and bring you directly to the eating part. However, just because you don’t have to cook it, doesn’t mean that it cannot help sometimes.
The frying makes everything taste more delicious and increases the natural flavors of the food. Just like fried potatoes are tastier than boiled, canned chicken sometimes tastes better when fried. No one can tell why this happens, but there is something about the crispiness and saltiness that make canned chicken taste better when fried.
So, if you think your canned chicken is a little bland and you also want some texture, don’t think twice before popping it onto the frying pan to sizzle a bit. Naturally, you can season it with salt and pepper or whatever spices you prefer, depending on what you will do with it later.
Turn It Into Dip/Pate
Transforming and repurposing your canned chicken is another excellent way to improve its taste. If you don’t like how it tastes on its own or you are tired of the taste, you can turn it into a pate or dip and enjoy it with some chips or smeared on a toasty and crispy slice of bread.
All you need to do is pop the canned chicken into a blender, add some garlic and parsley, salt and pepper, and just a few drops of lemon juice. Hit the puree button and let the magic happen. In under a minute, you will have a completely different product you can use any way you want.
The best thing about this idea is that it is open to any suggestion. You don’t have to use the ingredients I mentioned and feel free to add whatever you want. However, if you aren’t an experienced dip/pate maker, it is best to stick to what works.
Make a Salad
Just like canned tuna, canned chicken also works great as a salad. You can make it the star by adding olives, onions, grated carrots, canned corn, and spices. This way, you won’t overshadow the canned chicken, but up the flavor and add some texture to it.
Of course, you can add leafy greens such as lettuce, kale, or spinach too, as well as make an entirely different salad using other vegetables such as tomatoes and peppers.
Moreover, you can improve your canned chicken flavor by making it creamy. That would fall under the cream salad category, but you can call it whatever you want. Shred your canned chicken and add some mayo and sour cream, and you will get an amazingly smooth and rich mixture of flavors.
Turn It Into Stuffing
If you feel like experimenting with your canned chicken and you have some zucchini, eggplant, or potatoes lying around, turn it into the stuffing and enjoy the delicious results. And you don’t have to use it only for zucchini, eggplant, or potatoes; I just mentioned those as things you probably have at home.
Feel free to stuff whatever you want, peppers, bread, even a chicken.
The canned chicken stuffing is very easy to make and yields great results. Dice or shred the canned chicken and mix it with spices and some cheese. This universal canned chicken stuffing works everywhere, from stuffed vegetables to stuffed turkey or chicken. You are, of course, welcome to experiment and use whatever you see fit.
Canned Chicken Pasta Sauce
If you like the canned chicken flavor but find it just a tad bland, whereby you want to try it in a different setting, canned chicken pasta sauce sounds like the right idea for you. As you probably know, pasta sauce is one of the most versatile and playful things you can cook.
Therefore mix your canned chicken with your favorite ingredients and let it do its magic. If you prefer a red pasta sauce, it is enough to mix the canned chicken with some ketchup or tomato pure and let it simmer for a few minutes.
If you like white pasta sauces better, you need nothing more than just heavy cream and canned chicken shreds. Simmer it for a few minutes and season it to your liking.
Make Patties
If your canned chicken disappointed you, don’t rush to give up on it, as canned chicken patties may bounce you right back. Canned chicken patties are nothing more than ground canned chicken turned into patties which you can then fry or grill.
You are welcome to season the ground canned chicken any way you like, but you don’t have to. The grounding and the cooking cause enough changes to the flavor, so you may just like how it turns out without adding even so much as a pinch of salt.
Make Chicken Pot Pie
Chicken pot pie may just be where canned chicken shines best. You don’t have to follow the traditional recipe and add just the canned chicken, shredded, of course, mixed with cheese. If you want to, you can do the whole nine, but you don’t have to since this can be your chance to reinvent chicken pot pie.
All you have to do is spread the crust over a skillet, fill it with the canned chicken and cheese filling, cover it and cook it.
The best thing about this idea is that it doesn’t turn the canned chicken into an entirely different food, but it just improves its flavor since the crust and the cheese will make it creamier and intensify its natural taste. Moreover, you get a whole meal relatively quickly while skipping most of the work and some of the mess.
Deep-fried Cornflakes, Canned Chicken
Deep-fried cornflakes canned chicken may be precisely what you want if you feel like having something greasy, quick, and exploding with flavor. All you need are eggs and some cornflakes.
Beat the eggs and dunk the canned chicken pieces inside. Since eggs are used to make the coating stick to the meat, you technically don’t have to use eggs because the cornflakes will stick to the canned chicken anyway. Still, the eggs up the flavor, so I recommend you use them.
Once you have layered the canned chicken pieces in eggs, the next step is to cover them in cornflakes. Lastly, place the canned chicken pieces in how oil and let them deep fry for a few minutes. The deep-frying will make the meat crispy on the outside while keeping them soft on the inside.
Sauce It Up
If you feel peckish but lazy, you can always make canned chicken taste better by combining it with sauce. Since it is hard to find things that don’t go with canned chicken that find the things that do, almost any sauce imaginable will do a great job.
Everything goes from ketchup, mayo, mustard, or a combination of the three to something fancier, everything goes, and feel free to make or buy any sauce you want. Dipping the canned chicken inside the sauce is the only thing you have left to do.
Use White Vinegar and Lemon
If you like canned chicken in general, but there is something you don’t love about it, and you can’t figure out what that is, whereby that thing seems to be present in any canned chicken combination you try, white vinegar and lemon are your go-to guys.
What you don’t like is probably the slight bitter-sour note of the canned chicken, typical for most canned meats, which is a natural result of the marinating. Some love this flavor, but others want to get rid of it. Luckily, there is a way to do this without tampering with the taste.
Mix one tablespoon of white vinegar with one teaspoon of lemon, let your canned chicken marinate for an hour and take it out. The lemon and white vinegar mixture will extract the flavors that bother you, leaving you only with the tastes you enjoy.
How to Make Canned Chicken Taste Like Rotisserie?
Making canned chicken taste like rotisserie is possible, but it won’t taste identical, so don’t get your expectations too high. It will be delicious with that irresistible rotisserie charm, but it will still be an undercover canned chicken.
The seasoning is the key. Mix salt, pepper, paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, and thyme. Dosage the spices by intuition, as no measure fits everyone’s taste. Rub the canned chicken pieces with the seasoning blend and let it penetrate the meat for about ten minutes before you bake it.
Preheat the oven for about ten minutes and bake at 400 °F, i.e., 200 °C for about 40 minutes.
Can You Substitute Canned Chicken for Rotisserie Chicken?
You can substitute canned chicken for rotisserie chicken, but it won’t have the same flavor. Nevertheless, the result will still be delicious, but you will have to compromise.
