Menu:
Rotisserie Chicken * Mashed Potatoes and gravy * Stuffing * Buttered carrots
Time to dinner: 25 minutes
There’s a chain restaurant in our area called Boston Market – it started off as “Boston Chicken”, and the
Boston Market 1/2 chicken with stuffing, cornbread, and mashed & gravy
menu consisted mainly of rotisserie chicken with a choice of classic sides and a piece of cornbread. My family loves this place (it’s still one of the places we go when I’m not cooking). It didn’t take me long to realize that I could put together a reasonable facsimile of the “Boston Market” meal using store bought rotisserie chicken.
This is a meal I call “out of the box” since almost nothing is made from scratch. I don’t care. It’s quick, tasty, and we all sit down to a meal. This is one of those compromises I’m willing to make in order to have more time with my family. This meal gets a “bad rap”, but aside from a little extra sodium, what’s so bad?
Everything you need to make this meal.
The following are directions to make this meal in its entirety; there is no recipe, but a shopping list at the end.
| # | Step: | Time Elapsed |
| 1 | Turn the oven on to 350 degrees and unwrap chicken, put in a glass pan, and put in the oven to keep warm while you prepare the rest of the meal. | 5 min |
| 2 | Peel and slice the carrots (I usually cook at least 1 per person), and put in a sauce pan with water about ½ way high as carrots. Cover and put on high heat. | 10 min |
| 3 | Prepare potatoes and stuffing per package directions. | 15 min |
| 4 | Open can of gravy and heat in microwave (optional: open can of cranberry sauce) | 17 min |
| 5 | When water is boiling for potatoes/stuffing, prepare per package. | 20 min |
| 6 | Take chicken out of oven and carve/slice; drain carrots (I usually add a little butter and some salt and pepper), serve potatoes and stuffing. | 25 min |
Truth be told, we usually do a “serve off the stove” night with this meal – it uses so many pans, I don’t bother getting another set of serving dishes dirty.
The kids prefer green beans with this meal, but I don’t usually have time to snip the beans and steam them when I’m making this meal, so unless they do it in advance of me getting home, or if I pick up the new prepared microwave-ready fresh beans, then we end up eating carrots. I almost forgot – if I’m feeling expansive, I’ll add a box of macaroni and cheese to the sides – this is one of the Boston Market sides that my kids like.
Shopping List:
Rotisserie Chicken*
Betty Crocker Creamy Butter Potatoes
Stovetop Stuffing
Campbell’s Chicken gravy
Ocean spray cranberry sauce
1lb carrots
* many grocery stores make and sell cooked chickens. I usually buy 2 chickens because there are 4 of us that prefer dark meat. I use the leftover chicken for chicken salad.
