Easy-Prep Rotisserie Chicken Caesar Pasta Salad | Recipe Drop | Food52

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Rotisserie Chicken Caesar Pasta Salad:
“This is a summery, easy-prep pasta salad with all your favorites: rotisserie chicken, homemade Caesar dressing, ciabatta croutons, fusilli, and lots of freshly grated Parmesan. It comes together in just one big salad bowl, and can be made in advance to bring to the beach, on a picnic, or to have in the fridge to snack on whenever hunger strikes. Since it makes a big batch, it’s also perfect for summer BBQs and entertaining.

This Caesar dressing uses the traditional method of emulsifying olive oil, lemon juice, and egg yolks. I used to always fear breaking the emulsification, but using the tricks below will guarantee a nice, thick dressing”. – Nea Arentzen

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Rotisserie Chicken Caesar Pasta Salad: https://food52.com/recipes/90168-rotisserie-chicken-caesar-pasta-salad

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Caesar chicken pasta salad what did you think it should should have been what was your suggestion before pasta chicken salad Caesar you said like salad chicken salad Caesar pasta chicken Caesar salad my way makes way more sense hello everyone I’m Nia welcome to another episode of recipe drop with the Test Kitchen team and I bring you new recipes every week today we’re combining two classic summer favorites and we’re making a chicken Caesar pasta salad but because it’s summer and I personally don’t really want to be spending a ton of time next to a hot stove in the summer I’m using rotisserie chicken as an easy prep option we’re also making some nice rustic homemade croutons with chipata bread and then we’re also making a super easy classic sear dressing that does not require you to whip out your food processor it’s really great for entertaining especially with Memorial Day and other summer holidays coming up you can make it in advance which will only allow the flavors to meld together more and you can store in the fridge until your guests come over or you can pack it up to go for the beach or for a picnic for the dressing I have four medium to large sizes of garlic cloves and I am just going to chop this or mince this into a really fine paste I’m actually going to add a little bit of salt this is going to help to form it to make it into a pce as well I personally like when recipes call for cloves versus like teaspoons or cuz then it’s kind of hard you’re like you’re not going to chop a bunch of garlic and then measure it out in a teaspoon form all right I’m going to mince up some anchovie I accidentally put this in the fridge yesterday so the oil kind of solidified around it to kind of melt the oil again I just put it in some in a hot water bath I’m just chopping this up into really fine pieces and then I’m going to combine the garlic and the anchovy together and mince it up into a really like fine paste and I’m combining them and I’m just going to chop them together and then then what you can do is place it right on top and kind of just mush it together like this we’re going to end up with more of a paste than just minced garlic and anchovy and because we’re not using a food processor or a blender for this this is a really important step because you don’t want any large pieces of anchovy or garlic in the dressing just make sure that you are holding your knife in a safe way I have a just medium large pot of water here that I’m going to bring to a boil add a decent amount of salt so we want to kind of flavor the pasta from within okay so you can see we now have kind of a paste here and there are still some garlic pieces but they are pretty mashed up so it’s okay I’m actually going to be making the whole salad in this bowl which is really nice so I’m going to be making the dressing in here and then just tossing in the pasta and the chicken and the lettuce so yeah not a ton to clean up which is really nice I’m going to add in the garlic and anchovie paste and even if you don’t like anchovies it doesn’t taste very anchovy so still definitely add anchovies now I’m going to squeeze a little bit of lemon juice our trusty fluer that I’m sure you’ve seen and then this is really nice it has the tablespoon measurements in here which is cool it’s really handy for when you’re doing things like this I am looking for 4 tablespoon of lemon juice which is also a four of a cup so you could just use a fourth musroom cup too I found that usually half a lemon is usually about 2 tablespoons so you could just use the juice from one hole I’m going to add in three egg yolks I’m going to save the Egg Way for I don’t know something else something else that I’ll bake and then I’m going to add two teaspoons of Dijon mustard as well so you can make a Cesar dressing with mayonnaise if you must but doing it this way I just find is so much tastier and really isn’t that hard okay adding the lemon juice so we have four tablespoons here shoot got a little seed going to go in my with my tweezers I actually don’t have a juicer at home so I’m always juicing with my hands and I get lemon seeds in everything so now I’m just mixing everything together before I start to add the olive oil oh seed where’ it go yeah I just saw it [Music] up I don’t know someone might get a lemon seed in their Caesar dress Caesar pasta out later got it okay the pasta is boiling so I have 10 oz of fusili you can use whatever pasta shape you like but I I found that The Ridges of the facili catches the dressing really nicely and it just has a really nice mouth feel and bite to it overall um this is about 4 cups I would say now we need 2 cups of olive oil I definitely would recommend using a high quality olive oil one cup and so you need two cups one cup oh just one cup did I say two cups now we need two cups of olive oil so the trick for making a caesar salad dressing without a blender is you want to have a big bowl and a whisk and then you want to have a damp kitchen towel that I’m going to kind of wrap around and it’s going to hold the bowl in place while you whisk because you’re going to need both hands one hand to pour in the olive oil and one hand to whisk you’re not going to have a third hand to hold the bowl in place now the really important thing is to continuously whisk as you pour in a very very thin stream of all olive oil it does take some time and your arm is definitely going to be hurting by the end but this is a very foolproof way of making a nice thick Emulsion I like to kind of angle the bowls like this because then it kind of collects at the bottom and then it just makes it easier to whisk everything together so again I’m going to pour a really thin amount a really small amount of olive oil in while continuously whisking and sometimes I even like to start it up here where there’s not as much stressing collecting at the bottom if you do accidentally pour in a little extra olive oil that’s totally okay just make sure to pause and then just whisk it until it’s just completely mixed in I used to work at a uh Italian pizza spot and I worked in the salad bar and I made a lot of Caesar salad dressing but for that we may we use the food process sir I’m out here saying this is like a really easy recipe and my arm is so my arm was hurting it’s thin I just get paranoid about adding too much yeah okay perfect timing I’m going to drain the pasta I wanted to cook it now so that it has time to cool before we assemble the salad I’m going to toss it with just a little bit of olive oil so that they don’t stick together this is kind of my ideal Cesar dressing consistency it’s not too thick and it’s not too runny we still have a nice emulsification so now I’m going to grade in some Parmesan and I am grating in the parmesan before adding any salt and that is because parmesan has some salt in it and the antroy also has salt in it so it’s better to add all the salty components before adding extra salt I’m going to grade in about half a cup of Parmesan you can also definitely use pre- shredded or pre fre um grated Parmesan if you don’t want to do it yourself and then I’m also going to grate some into the salad later and then also some on top so there’s going to be lots of Parmesan mix this in now I’m going to add tons of freshly ground black pepper freshly ground black pepper is always best in salads because I find it’s a bit more aromatic than if you just have the pregrown stuff and this pepper grinder that I’m using using is from hulum and it’s really cool because you can change the sizes of the peppercorn and it’s very aesthetic and it’s kind of cool cuz it comes out of the sides instead of the bottom oh I made a mistake I have a quarter of teaspoon so there’s going to be a few of these okay teaspoon and a half and then we can always add more after two that’s good yeah no more salt it does kind of look like a lot of dressing but we have a lot of pasta we have a lot of chicken and we also have a lot of salad that we’re going to add so and we are feeding a lot of people so now I am going to toast the chabat for this recipe I’m doing a one to one to one to one ratio so 4 cups pasta four cups lettuce um four cups chicken ideally and then four cups chabata breadcrumbs chabata is really nice for this you could use sourdough or any other bread that you have but it’s I like chewata it because it has these really big open holes which I think is great breaking it apart with your hands instead of cutting it makes it kind of gives this like rustic look this is not D bread D bread is better for breadcrumbs but this is going to be perfect too this is going to also work really well oh this is actually Rosemary I think yum yeah so this is a rosemary chabata so I’m just breaking them into one to 2 in pieces you don’t have to be too brushes about it it’s kind of nice also having some bigger pieces and then some smaller pieces I have probably about four cups I’d say um I am not going to add any olive oil to this I don’t really feel like I need to and it’s going to get nice and crispy without the olive oil anyway so this is going to go in for about 10 minutes halfway through I’m going to open the oven and I’m going to give them a nice stir just to make sure that there’s even Browning okay so now we’re going to break down the rotisserie chicken I am using gloves for this you don’t have to ideally for the recipe you’d want four cups of chicken um this is kind of on the smaller side so I don’t think we’re going to get four cups I think we’re going to probably get three cups maybe um that’s okay but if you have the option to get a bigger rotisserie chicken for this definitely do that yeah I went through a phase about a year ago where I bought a roasted Street chicken probably every week and it’s just so nice because you just always have chicken ready to go so I’m just breaking off the main big pieces now and then I’m going to go back in and I’m going to shred them into smaller pieces I kept seeing so many funny videos of girls in New York going to Whole Foods to go get the rotisserie chicken and nothing else and they just have like the bag of the rotisserie chicken as like a little purse I definitely did that a few times who’s got the best rotisserie chicken I don’t know I really like Whole Foods yeah I um I like Whole Foods I also like the one from Brooklyn Fair is pretty good I am actually instead of shredding them I’m actually GNA cut them into pieces so that’s why I’m not shredding the breasts I am actually just going in now and cutting them cutting the larger pieces into probably 1 in pieces this also helps to break up the skin also because it’s summer and it’s grilling season if you do have a grill I think grilling like grilled chicken is also amazing in Caesar salads I really wish I had a Grill but it’s New York and I don’t have a balcony and I don’t think I could fit a grill out on a balcony anyway okay that looks good if you don’t like the skin you could also throw it away but I really like the skin all right let’s check on the koutons so I forgot to pause halfway through and stir them so they’re a little toasty on the tops I’m just going to go ahead and add all the chicken to the dressing I know it looks like a lot but it’s going to be really good now I’m going to chop up some roma I’m going to do about four cups as I mentioned before but I’m going to cut them up into probably like 2 in lettuce pieces you can also tear the lettuce if you find that easier I think a fun way to mix a salad up like this you could use endives sometimes I do that you could use butter lettuce you could use little gem it’s really up to you and what’s in season and and what you feel would add to the salad okay the pasta is nice and cool I’m going to add all the pasta I’m going to toss in all the breadcrumbs and don’t worry about everything being too cold because I’m going to pop this in the fridge anyway for a little bit oops and let the pasta and the breadcrumbs really soak up the dressing and just for it to chill for a little bit too I thought this was going to be a big bowl but it’s almost too small ooh let’s actually grate in some more parmesan too yeah we’re going to do some nice big shaves instead feel like that’s always nice yeah just going to add in a little bit more black pepper so you can see the ratio of just one to one is really nice here and it also makes it really easy so you have probably a cup and a half of dressing or maybe two um and then you just have four cups of everything else I’m going to let this chill in the fridge for probably half an hour I let this sit in the fridge probably not long enough cuz I didn’t want to wait longer but I have this really pretty serving dish by wonky wear I really love this poppy it comes in a few different colors not flavors I want to Plate it up nicely and then I want to serve it to people in the office so I’m going to taste it now little little rotisserie chicken a little pasta and yeah this is I feel like exactly what I want in a summer dish the dressing came together really well it’s really creamy not too much dressing you can see like it’s perfect and the fucili is just the perfect Pasta shape I think here this is going to be like a nice big pile of pasta salad oh this is a nice Sur serving platter for this the green it’s nice that it makes a lot because it serves a ton of people you could easily just make the whole box of pasta and just add a little bit more lettuce and maybe make some more dressing but it’s really okay if you don’t have four cups exactly of everything but these big Crouton pieces are so nice I think it adds a really nice texture to the salad and they’re crispy on the outside and they’re still pretty soft and tender on the inside and especially after the whole salad has sat for a little bit the croutons kind of soak up the dressing and they just become little flavor bombs I actually haven’t tried one yet mhm this is so good feel like I’d be happy just eating the croutons some more parmesan I love when you go to a restaurant and you get a Caesar salad and there’s just a pile of Parmesan that kind of covers a whole salad I think it looks really good it looks pretty and it looks really good so I’m just going to go crazy here a super easy chicken caesar pasta salad that comes together in probably less than half an hour with everything I can’t imagine anything else I would want to eat on Memorial Day honestly anybody want to taste Caesar do you want to come ber Alison berer do you want any anyone anyone oh we actually have these nice Thomas fukes plates they’re actually outerwear and you wouldn’t think it but they are not ceramic they look at the though but they’re actually individually dipped like this so they all kind of have a different pattern which is really nice yeah go for it yeah I already tasted yeah yeah one for filia yeah I know classic SE classic pasta salad pasta It’s hard to get everything in a bite I like how you uh dissociate it as you add the Pern yeah just one crazy what I’m talking about yeah did you make this for more world day oh yeah dr’s really nice thanks yeah even if you can’t like really taste Rosemary like it’s still I feel like it adds like a little bit of like hint yeah a dimension there a banger yeah thanks you win you can find this recipe in the description below like comment and subscribe I hope you make this if you do please let me know I would love to hear what you think especially if you make it for Memorial Day hope you enjoy it and I will see you in the next video