Costco Salsa Chicken

Adapted from nowhere, because I INVENTED IT

Servings: we generally get about 12 lunch-sized (1.5 cup) servings out of this.

Notes: This is my favorite lunch that you can make entirely from 3-4 ingredients procured from Costco:

 

The Hand Pulled Rotisserie Chicken Breast Meat, if you didn’t know, is the most amazing thing. It can be found in this general part of Costco:

I saw it in the store, and I looked at it for a few weeks before I had the nerve to buy it. Something about precooked packaged chicken really skeeves me out, which is unfortunate because raw chicken also skeeves me out too. When I first described it to my wife, it started something along the lines of “it sounds delicious, but looks a little gross.” and then as most conversations with my wife go, I wound up talking myself into buying it, ending with “But I guess I’d also look gross if I was vacuum sealed in plastic. I’m going to try it.”

Anyways, I finally bought it, and now I buy one or two of these a week. Let me further explain this product. You know those delicious $5 rotisserie chickens at Costco? Well, someone has painstakingly pulled the breast off the delicious Costco rotisserie chicken for you, for the low low cost of $11.99. I literally have purchased dozens  if not hundreds of rotisserie chickens in the past, only to pull off the breast and discard the rest (I know, I am a monster. I married a dark meat eater to even things out). This is all the chicken breast, none of the hassle, none of the chicken skin temptation, for $11.99. It’s almost 3 lb of tender, shreddable, non-rubbery precooked chicken breast. It’s magical.

You can do TONS of recipes with this stuff, by just mixing it with whatever sauce you’d like. Barbecue! Buffalo! Curry simmer sauces! The possibilities are endless, with the caveat that they all will cost SmartPoints of the sauce. What sets this recipe apart is that there are no SmartPoints in the sauce. The sauce is salsa. Salsa is the sauce.

Ingredients:

• Costco “Hand Pulled Rotisserie Chicken Breast Meat” – you could use anywhere from half the package to the whole damn thing (2 lbs, 10 oz to be exact), depending on how many servings you want this to be. Go nuts. I use the whole thing most of the time.
• Costco-sized (48 oz) jug of fresh salsa
• Canned black beans – anywhere from 4-6 cans works. I use 5 cans to get 12 servings.
• Limes (4 or 5)
• Cilantro (if you have it. There’s also cilantro in the salsa so not totally necessary).

Instructions:

• Drain the beans and put them in a giant pot.

• Pour half the jug of salsa over the top.

• Cook the beans/salsa mixture over medium heat until heated through and bubbling.

• Put the chicken in there. It looks like a crime scene, I know.

• Break it up into breasts but don’t worry about shredding it yet.

• Once the chicken is warmed a bit and softened up, it should be shred-able with a fork. Shred it up nice.

• Once the chicken is all shredded, squeeze the lime juice over the top, season to taste with salt, add the cilantro if you’re using it, and remove from the heat.

We divide this into about a dozen 2 cup lunch containers. I like to kill the second half of the salsa jug by pouring a bit of fresh salsa over the top of each portion.

Here is the Weight Watchers SmartPoints breakdown:

Servings	~12
Chicken breast meat	0 points
Salsa	0 points
Black beans	0 points
Lime juice	0 points
Cilantro	0 points
Points per serving	0 points

Oh would you look at that? ZERO POINTS FOR THIS CRAZY DELICIOUS MEAL.