Shop at Costco, and one of its hot-food items you’ll see in many shopping carts is the warehouse retailer’s popular rotisserie chicken. It’s hard to beat a juicy, flavorful whole roasted chicken for around $5, but there’s one part of the chicken that can be used in a better way than just eating it as it’s served. No, it’s not shredding up the leftover breasts into chicken salad — but ripping off the skin (that’s typically not crunchy at all) and making it crispy with the air fryer on your kitchen counter.
It’s a rather simple solution to soggy rotisserie chicken skin with a variety of delicious uses. The air fryer makes it easy because you won’t have to wait for the oven to preheat, so it’s a quick process. Think of it as chicken cracklings or chips that aren’t too far off from pork rinds. Of course, a Costco rotisserie chicken is supreme, but this hack works with the dish from any other grocery store or deli. You can also pull off the skin from last night’s baked chicken or a homemade rotisserie chicken.
How to turn skin from a Costco rotisserie chicken into a crunchy snack and the best ways to use it
The first step is to carefully tear off the skin from the Costco rotisserie chicken (and try not to eat it all in the process). The rotisserie chicken skin is usually rather flavorful, but you can always spruce it up with some salt or other seasonings before you cook it. Depending on how large the of chicken skin comes off, you might want to cut them into smaller, proportionate pieces so they cook evenly. Set that air fryer to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and place the chicken skin pieces on the tray. Don’t overlap them so that all of the edges crisp up. Cook them for about five or six minutes, then flip and cook them for an additional five or six minutes.
Now, you can certainly eat the air-fried chicken skin as a snack, basically as a carb-free replacement for chips, perhaps served with our protein-packed ranch dip recipe for a watch party or paired with guacamole on taco night. It’s also a solution to croutons on top of a salad, perhaps crumbled on top of our Caesar salad lettuce spears recipe. Really, whenever you need a crunchy snack or a dish that requires a crispy topping, toss that Costco rotisserie chicken in the air fryer for an easy solution.
