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The Costco cooked roti chicken is $5.99 (I think). I basically have 2 full meals for my family with no cooking time involved. Even in a pinch Albertson’s or Whole Foods chicken makes a healthy-ish type of dinner with some greens, pita and hummus.
While I don’t go out of my way for chicken its is a very quick, economical and convenient mid-week dinner that ends up being lunch/snacks in the form of chicken quesadillas, pulled chicken in sandwiches, etc…
There was a delightful feud between Michael Ruhlman and Russ Parsons (they are buddies) when Ruhlman talked about how easy and fast it is to cook a chicken at home and why don’t more folks do it… and estimated the total time at 1 hour.
Parsons nailed him.
Broke down the shopping time, cook time etc and pointed out at, as Ruhlman worked at home, he was counting the cook time as one hour, because he was doing tons of stuff in-between as the chicken cooked, so he just counted the active work time but that if you counted the time from picking up the chicken to getting home to prepping and cooking and resting - it was much much longer.
I love Zankou, but their chickens have gotten much smaller and, pricier. At least by me.
For me myself and I? I love chicken in a pot, done in the crockpot, as it’s tender, tasty, real and cheap. Amazing concentrated broth. You just can’t eat the skin. Next up? Sticky chicken, when you rub the chicken with various herbs and spices, let it dry brine overnight in the fridge then? Roll up four balls of aluminum foil, put them in the crock put, put the rubbed chicken over it and? Set it to high. In 4 - 5 hours you get a beautifully roasted chicken with no basting needed. Still have to do much of the work the night before but? Tasty and easy.
That said? If I have a sick cat who needs chicken NOW or I need a fast reasonably healthy meal start? It’s imperfect but so darn handy - to Costco I go : )
Try the Trader Joes garlic sauce. I’m at Costco every 7-10 days, and the same with Tjs. I grab the garlic sauce on my TJs run, and then grab a roti chicken from Costco, along with the Sabra hummus and the Greek Pita. Makes dinner plus lunch the next day, and then some.
I get that, and I do. But Ruhlman was over simplifying so, Parsons called him on it. All in good fun : )
I do try to keep stocked pantry and fridge, but when I lived by Elat Market in the Pico/Robertson area, it was so close to my house and they got different stuff every day, at least once a week I’d stop there on my way home to see what was new and have that decide what dinner would be that night. A little bit of cooking entertainment…!
Stock varies from one TJ’s to another, but you can ask at the manager’s desk whether they’re just not carrying something at that store or if it’s no longer available for them to order.
I believe their policy is to drop the bottom-performing 10% of their products each year.
We just picked it up for the first time a few days ago at the Trader Joe’s at USC’s University Village. It’s not called Garlic Sauce but Garlic Spread and Dip It was with other refrigerator dips in the store.
So many variables, eh?
. I’m not sure if all TJ carry the same products?