If you love a good old fashioned roast chicken dinner your going to love these delicious roast chicken dinner and leftover recipes. In modern day Scotland a roast chicken dinner is a classic Scottish meal to be eaten on a Sunday with the family.

Quite often the leftovers are thrown in the bin or composting bin and are wasted but you can create so many delicious recipes with those leftovers from soups to stews and pies to pastries. In this blog post you will find four delicious recipes from creating a delicious roast chicken dinner my favourite way to creating a delicious creamy chicken pie. We will then use the leftovers from both of those recipes to create a delicious chicken and vegetable soup to use up the broth.

This collection of recipes is brought to you in collaboration with Sustainable Kirrimuir who are working hard on their ‘Suss Your Food’ project to encourage the reduction of food waste in the family home. The Suss Your Food challenge by Sustainable Kirriemuir is helping to reduce food waste and help families make more sustainable food choices. They are providing information from meal planning to portioning, storage, recipe choices and more. Their aim is to help people live lighter on the planet and help families save money in the process. If you would like to find out more you can email them or contact them on their social media channels below. The Suss Your Food challenge available in the Kirriemuir area and the glens.

Sustainable Kirriemuir Email Address: lauren@sustainablekirriemuir.co.uk

Sustainable Kirriemuir Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/sustainablekirrie

Sustainable Kirriemuir Instagram Page: https://www.instagram.com/sustainablekirrie/

Sustainable Kirriemuir YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO14LFxrfBVjXVOk856EnpQ

If you like the sound of these delicious recipes you may also enjoy making these delicious traditional Scottish soups with your chicken leftover broth (recipe below). I love the traditional Scottish barley broth soup recipe its so easy to make and is such a hearty and delicious soup sepecially on a cold day. The Traditional Scottish Hotch Potch recipe is also really delicious especially when it is made at the end of the Summer months when the broad beans and peas are fresh out of the garden or seasonally available in the supermarket or farmers markets. You will find other delicious soup ideas over on The Wee Larder Youtube Channel and other ideas for using up your leftover chicken meat.

Tips for making this collection of recipes:

• Purchase the best quality of chicken you can afford. I like to buy Organic or Free Range chicken and although they are a bit more expensive I aim to use up every single piece of it to make it worth every penny.
• You can save your leftovers in the fridge after the initial roast chicken dinner. This means you don’t have to make the chicken pie recipe or stock recipe straight away and gives you the chance to make it the next day.
• Use up whats in your fridge to create the vegetable base, it doesn’t have to be anything fancy, any vegetales will do. I like to use carrots, potatoes, any other root vegetable or even some peppers or courgettes work well too and I always top it off with a good handful of unpeeled garlic cloves. These work really well in the stock the next day and you can also eat them with the chicken dinner.
• If you want to go for more flavour you can stuff the chicken with oatmeal, finely chopped onion and a few tablespoons of butter with a few garlic cloves or a half lemon in the cavity. This gives the chicken a delicious flavour and works really well as a side for serving. To keep the recipe simple I haven’t included a stuffing below but feel free to include this one or your own.
• My chicken was cooked for around an hour and 30minutes but please check the cooking time for your chicken and the temperature on the back of the chicken packet before cooking as all chicken weights will need different times to cook.
• If you don’t have a lot of chicken for your chicken pie you can use meaty mushrooms or cooked potatoes to bulk it out. I like to keep the meat from the wings and some of the fiddly parts of the legs for the soup at the end.
• Experiment with the soup vegetables as you can use whatever you have available. Swap out the vegetables in the soup recipe for similiar quantities of a different vegetable.
• If you have stock leftover store it in the fridge and use up as soon as possible. You can use it to cook vegetables, add liquid to stews or other meals cooking in the pot.
• You can buy a jar or two of white sauce in the supermarket to make the pie even easier to make.
• Save all of your vegetable scraps from the first roast chicken recipe when preparing your vegetables, pop them into a freezer bag and save for later.
• You can also make the broth with lamb or beef bones and the soup recipe would work well with those also.
• The recipe below is for a good old fashioned chicken stock but if you want to make a traditional nutritious bone broth you want to cook the leftover bones etc. for 24-48hrs. This will give you an even more nutritious, gelatinous broth that may be good for the body in many ways.

The four recipes are as follows and in the following order:

• Roast Chicken Family Dinner
• Leftover Creamy Chicken Pie Recipe
• Leftover Chicken Broth
• Chicken and Vegetable Broth Soup

Roast Chicken Family Dinner Recipe

• 1 Whole Chicken – the best quality you can afford
• Roasting Vegetables to cover the bottom of your roasting dish – carrots, potatoes, onions, garlic clovesetc. (chopped chunky)
• Olive Oil
• Salt and Pepper

Recipe Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to the specified time on the back of the chicken packaging. I set mine to 170-180oc and thats a fan oven.
2. Prepare your roasting dish by drizzling some olive oil over the roasting dish that you will be cooking the chicken in and add in all of your vegetables.
3. Stir the vegetables around in the olive oil and sprinkle the vegetables with salt and pepper.
4. Add the chicken on top of the bed of chunky vegetables and season with a drizzle of olive oil, salt and pepper.
5. Add stuffing to the inside of the chicken if you want to serve it up as a side dish. This recipe doesn’t include a stuffing but a suggestion is made above in the blog recipe tips.
6. Cook the chicken for the specified time and temperature on the back of the chicken packet.
7. Remove the chicken halfway through to stir the vegetables around the chicken so they crisp up on all sides. Don’t worry about the vegetables underneath the chicken they will continue to cook away nicely and shouldn’t burn.
8. Remove the chicken after the specified cooking time and cut a slice between the breast and the leg to make sure the juices are running clear. If they are clear it is ready to serve.
9. Slice up and serve your favourite parts of the chicken and set the leftovers aside. I like to keep the wings for the soup and some of the fiddly leg peices and the chunkier leftovers will be used for the pie.
10. Set your chicken aside to cook before removing meat for leftovers or refridgerate and remove the leftover meat the following day. I find it is easier to do when it is cool.

Leftover Creamy Chicken Pie Recipe

Leftover Chicken Pie Recipe

• Leftover Chicken from the Roast Dinner
• Salt and Pepper
• Frozen Vegetables
• 3tbsp butter
• 3tbsp flour
• Whole Milk (approx 500ml – 1lt)
• Leftover Herbs or Greens
• 1 Premade pack of Puff Pastry

Recipe Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven at 160oc for 25-30minutes (I’m using a fan oven).
2. Remove all of the leftover meat from the chicken including any breast or leg meat and if you don’t have enough from that remove the meat from the wings and the underside of the chicken. I like to keep the wings and underside meat for the soup if possible but don’t worry if you have to use it all here that is ok.
3. Set aside the skin and all the bones from the chicken and keep for making the broth. Don’t throw any of it in the bin.
4. Place all of the meat into a suitably sized pie dish or other oven proof dish and chop into smaller pieces if nessecary. We like it pretty well chopped for feeding the younger ones in the family but chunky is ok too.
5. Start cooking all of the frozen vegetables. As per the video I used about 5 handfuls of frozen veg, 1 per person but just pop into the sauce pan whatever you are going to fit into your own pie dish. Simmer the vegetables away on a medium simmer until defrosted and slightly cooked but not mushy as some cooking will take place in the pie dish.
6. Start making the white sauce by melting the butter with the flour in a small saucepan and whisk until a paste forms, cook this while stirring for a few minutes.
7. Add in a small amount of milk to the flour and butter paste and whisk through on a medium heat. Keep adding in small amounts of milk until you have a thick creamy consistency of a sauce. The heat will continue to thicken the sauce so once you have the desired consistency remove it from the heat. If at any time it has thickened too much just add in a little milk at a time, whisk through and it should thin down nicely.
8. Drain the frozen vegetables carefully, add them to the pie dish and mix through.
9. Pour in the white sauce into the pie dish and mix through into the chicken and the vegetables.
10. Make sure your pastry is at room temperature, open the packaging and unroll the pastry out over the top of the pie dish and make two or three holes on the top of the dish to allow steam to escape.
11. Cook in the oven for 25 – 30 minutes at 160oc.
12. Remove from the oven and leave for a couple of minutes before slicing and serving up.

Leftover Chicken Broth Recipe

• Leftover Chicken Bones, Skin, Meat etc.
• Vegetable Scraps – Onion tops , vegetable skins and peelings, garlic, leek ends, herbs etc.
• Leftover Cooked Vegetables
• Water to cover

Recipe Instructions for the Chicken Broth:

1. Place the leftover chicken pieces into a large soup pan or slow cooker. I have shown both methods in the video at the top of this blog post.
2. Add in a good few handfuls of leftover vegetable scraps from making the roast chicken dinner or some previously frozen vegetable scraps from your freezer.
3. Add enough water to completely cover the leftovers and a little more, basically as much as you can fit safely into the pan. If its not quite covering everything don’t worry just cover as much as possible.
4. Bring to the boil and lower to a medium to low simmer and cook for around 6-8hrs.
5. If using the slow cooker add all of the leftovers, scraps and any additional frozen scraps into large slow cooker pot and add enough water to cover everything and a little more. Cook on high for 6-8hrs for a good flavoured stock.
6. Set the stock aside to cool before draining.
7. Arrange a large bowl with a seive on top on the counter and using soup ladle start straining the stock through the seive into the large bowl as per the video above. You will need about 1 litre – 1.5 litres for the next recipe so set that aside and store the rest in a glass container in the fridge. If you don’t have quite enough don’t worry we can top up your stock with water for the next recipe.
8. If you have any meat leftover on the bones after the stock is completely drained remove this and set aside on a plate for the soup.

Chicken and Vegetable Broth Soup

• 2tbsp of butter
• 1 onion chopped
• 3 small carrots (or 1 large)
• 4 medium potatoes (or 2 large)
• 1 small neep cubed
• chicken stock & water (if nessecary)
• Salt and Pepper

Recipe Instructions:

1. Melt the butter in a large soup pan and add in the chopped onion, carrots, potatoes, neeps or other vegetables if you are swapping out items.
2. Stir the vegetables around in the large pan and cook until slightly softened and sweetened in the butter.
3. Pour in enough vegetable stock to cover the vegetables completely. Add in a little water if nessecary to cover the vegetables. The vegetables should be covered and a little extra liquid on the top of them should be present also.
4. Simmer on a low to medium heat until the vegetables are cooked through and really soft for about 40minutes.
5. Using a potato masher mash the vegetables down a little so that they are blended slightly into the soup. You can liquidize the entire soup if you want to create a smooth creamy soup.
6. If you had a small plate of leftover meat, from the above broth recipe, shred this up and add back into the soup and heat through.
7. Serve up the soup into large bowls with crusty bread on the side.

If you enjoyed these recipes you may also like to share them to your favourite pinterest board using the pins below:

You may also enjoy some of my other delicious seasonal recipes below: