Leftover Lunch: Chicken Spaghetti

When shopping for chicken, it is often less expensive to purchase whole chicken than boneless.  I can usually find chicken breast with attached ribs at $1 pound as opposed to the $4.99 pound of boneless breast.  What  I am most often asked is what to do with the bones.  Whether I start with a whole chicken or with those pieces with bones, once I trim off the bulk of the meat, I put the bones in a pan of water and cook.  Once cool, save the broth and completely debone.  Depending on how much broth you end up with, you can divide, if needed for several recipes.  You should have about 2 cups of broth / chicken pieces.

1 envelope spaghetti seasoning
1 can tomato paste
Thin spaghetti pasta
Optional:  onion, bell pepper, mushroom


Add only the broth to a 3 qt saucepan.  Add extra water if  needed.  Your pot should be about 2/3 full.
In a bowl, combine the chicken pieces, envelope of spaghetti seasoning, tomato paste and any option vegetables you want to add.  Stir together.  Add chicken broth until you have a consistency you want.  I like my sauce thicker than most jar sauces.  Set aside.

Bring the chicken broth to a boil and cook the pasta according the package directions.  Drain.

Add the sauce to the pasta and stir.

Leftover Lunch - Taco Soup

Today's Leftover Lunch is one of my favorite and a standard in our home.  Living in Texas means lots of Mexican or Tex-Mex food.  Chili is big.

There are several ways to make "leftover lunch" really work for your family.

What I have done for years is to use a 3 cup plastic container and just add the leftover ingredients until the bowl is full.  Keep in the freezer.  Because food in a plastic bowl in the freezer will not come out easily, I normally rinse off the bowl and then invert into whatever pan or crockpot I'm using and pour 1 cup very hot water of it.  The water will become part of the stock.  Keep sandwich size zip bags of corn chips in the freezer, too.

In my pot today are the leftover parts of:

chili
black beans
corn
hamburger patty
ground sausage
pinto beans
chopped onion, bell pepper and tomato

My bowl of ingredients were not frozen, so this is how I started.  If you start with frozen ingredients, skip the sautee part.

In a 3 qt saucepan, sautee 1/2 chopped onion / bell pepper in 2 Tab oil.

Lower heat and add the leftover ingredients and 2 to 3 cups water.  If you do not have tomato, you can add pico, salsa or even 1/2 cup ketchup.  Simmer on medium for 30 minutes.  If cooking in a crockpot, turn on low for about 3 hours.

When the mixture has cooked together, reduce heat and add 1 cup crushed corn chips (the ones at the bottom of the bag).  Allow the mixture to simmer until the corn chips dissolve and become part of the broth.

Taco Ground Beef Recipes

A collection of recipes using taco ground beef.

Taco Ground Beef Recipes by