Quick and Easy Leftover Chicken Curry recipe

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This easy leftover chicken curry is one of our favourite ways to turn the remains of a roast chicken into another family dinner. It’s mild, comforting and ready in around 40 minutes using mostly ingredients we already have in the cupboard.

Leftover roast chicken is actually quite rare in our house, but when we do have some, this curry is usually what we make with it. Sometimes we’ll deliberately cook a larger chicken knowing that we can stretch it across two meals.

I make ours with curry powder, cumin, coriander, tomatoes and a cinnamon stick, along with red pepper and onion. It’s a fairly mild curry, which works well for us as a family, but you can easily add more heat if that’s how you prefer yours.

The same recipe is also useful after Christmas. I’ve swapped the chicken for leftover turkey plenty of times when we’ve inevitably cooked far too much!

What you need to make leftover chicken curry

This recipe mostly uses simple cupboard ingredients, which is one of the reasons we make it so often.

• 250g cooked leftover chicken – don’t worry if you have slightly more or less; this is a leftovers recipe after all!
• 1 large onion – diced.
• 1 red pepper – cut into chunks.
• 2 garlic cloves
• 3 tbsp curry powder – I usually use medium curry powder, but choose the strength that suits your family.
• 1 tbsp ground cumin
• 1 tbsp ground coriander
• 1 tbsp tomato purée
• 1 x tin chopped tomatoes
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 200ml chicken stock – vegetable stock works too.
• Olive oil
• Salt and pepper

The recipe is quite forgiving when it comes to the amount of chicken. That’s part of the point – I want to use whatever we’ve actually got left rather than cooking more chicken just to hit an exact weight.

Is this leftover chicken curry spicy?

I make this as a fairly mild family curry using medium curry powder.

If you prefer more heat, you can use a hotter curry powder or add some fresh chilli.

I’d start cautiously if you’re cooking for everyone and let people add extra heat at the table. It’s much easier to make a curry hotter than it is to rescue one that’s become too spicy!

Can I make this with leftover turkey?

Yes. I use exactly the same idea with leftover turkey, particularly after Christmas when we almost always have far more turkey than we need.

Simply swap the cooked chicken for cooked turkey and add it to the curry in the same way.

It’s an easy Boxing Day or post-Christmas dinner when nobody particularly wants another plate of roast dinner leftovers.

Can you reheat leftover chicken curry?

Because this recipe starts with previously cooked chicken, it’s particularly important to handle the leftovers carefully.

Use chicken that has been cooled and refrigerated promptly after the original meal, and make sure the curry is thoroughly heated until piping hot throughout when you prepare it.

If you’re planning to keep leftover curry, cool it promptly, store it covered in the fridge and follow current Food Standards Agency guidance on reheating leftovers.

I prefer to make only as much as we expect to eat, particularly when I’m already starting with leftovers.

More ways to use leftover chicken

Curry isn’t the only way we use up leftover roast chicken.

I’ve put together a collection of my favourite leftover chicken recipes for those weeks when we’ve deliberately cooked a larger chicken or simply ended up with more than expected.

Using leftovers for another dinner is one of the easiest ways I’ve found to reduce food waste while also making the following night’s meal much quicker.

If you’ve got leftover chicken in the fridge and don’t fancy curry, have a look through those ideas before deciding what to make next.

An easy second meal from a roast chicken

This leftover chicken curry is exactly the sort of recipe I love having in our meal plan – simple ingredients, very little waste and another family dinner without having to start completely from scratch.

If I know we’re going to have a busy week, I’ll sometimes deliberately cook a larger chicken so there is enough left for another meal. It makes the following night’s dinner so much easier.

Serve the curry with rice, naan or whatever you usually enjoy with curry, and adjust the spice level to suit your family.

If you make it, leave me a comment below and let me know how you got on. I’d particularly love to know what you usually turn your leftover roast chicken into!