What to do with the other half of a chicken? Chicken Wraps!

I've given up oven-roasting a chicken for Sunday's roast dinner, these days.  Instead, I pot-roast it.  This involves oven-roasting for a half hour, then poaching for an hour or so in water with celery, carrot, onion, garlic, parsley - and any other vegetables or spices you might fancy at the time.

I've found that, not only does this produce a lovely moist bird for the primary meal, but the secondary meal (i.e. the other half of the chicken) benefits too.  The leftover meat from a roast chicken has that undeniably "roasted" flavour which can turn a bit sulphurous depending on how you treat it.  However, the other half of a pot-roasted chicken doesn't carry that sulphurous flavour.  As such, it makes it easier to find something to do with it!

One of my son's favourite dishes is plain old chicken wraps.  Now this involves leftover chicken, iceberg lettuce, mayonnaise and tomato salsa, which is okay but a bit under-achieving, I think.

We gave him a try with Fajitas, but it was just too complicated for his taste buds.  He liked them well enough, but they weren't deemed as good as his favourite plain old wrap.

In an attempt to strike a compromise between Mum & Dad's desire for spicier flavours and son's preference for the plainer, I came up with the chicken wrap we sampled yesterday.

Each wrap consisted of some Re-fried Beans, Iceberg lettuce, the mix of chicken, onions & red pepper, sour cream, salsa - and wrap.  Now, we'd previously always had Re-fried Beans beside our wraps, which left me without a context to eat the beans as either I was using a knife and fork, or fingers - for ease, certainly not both.  So it occurred to me, why not put the beans inside the wrap as the base upon which everything else sticks to?

I have to admit that son decided he'd have preferred his wrap without the beans, which is fine because when I do them next time, I'll just leave the beans out of his version.  No problem with that.

What I found was that the spicy Re-fried beans just about had sufficient flavour in them to cater for the spice requirements of the adults.  The onion/red pepper/chicken melange was flavoursome and juicy - and two wraps was almost more than I could handle.  (Almost!).

Oh and yes, those are curly fries.  ~hangs head in shame~  Don't blame me.  Apparently boys have to have curly fries occasionally or all their hair falls out - that's what they tell me, anyway.  ~shrug~  What was I to do?




SPICY CHICKEN WRAPS (feeds 3, with 2 wraps each)

Ingredients :

six large wraps (look in the Bakery part of your supermarket, rather than the "Mexican" aisle, for the larger size wraps)
a tin of Re-fried Beans (or make your own)
4-5 leaves of Iceberg lettuce, shredded
a red pepper, sliced thinly
a large onion, sliced thinly
half a cooked chicken, shredded
olive oil
sour cream
tomato salsa (or make your own).

Method :

1.  Take a large frying pan and heat some olive oil.  Fry the onion slices gently until transparent but not coloured (around 5-10 minutes).

2.  Add the pepper slices and continue to fry for another 5-10 minutes.

3.  Add the shredded chicken, stir to combine, then place on a lid (or a baking sheet, if your frying pan doesn't have a lid) and heat through gently.

4.  Heat up the wraps by dry frying, or popping into the oven for 6-7 minutes, or in the microwave for 6-7 minutes on full.

5.  Heat up the Re-fried beans.

6.  To assemble the wraps, take the Re-fried beans and smear some down the centre (from 12-6 o'clock).  Adjust quantity according to how much the recipient likes them.

7.  Sprinkle some lettuce over, then add some of the chicken mixture.

8.  Blob on some sour cream and salsa.

9.  To fold, take the lower edge and bring it up to cover the first third of the filling.  Take the left hand edge and bring it across, then do the same with the right hand edge.  Leave the top edge free.

Serve with fries and napkins!

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