Nice Spread: Chicken Rillettes

Chicken Week™ continues with an infinitely variable, extremely tasty spread

Chicken rillettes on sourdough with hot mustard and cornichons

This post follows the chicken stock post, so if you missed that one feel free to check it out.

Rillettes belong to the hallowed pantheon of potted meats, wherein various slow-cooked animal parts get seasoned, cooked, and then preserved in fat—sometimes canned, sometimes just kept cool in a larder (the “lard” in larder is, after all, fat). This was the first thing I thought to make with the quiveringly tender meat from the long-simmered chicken bones. You want meat that’s soft and shreddy, so that the result is relatively spreadable even when cold, so this is an easy and rewarding way to use the meat off of any soup bones. It also slips right off, making processing a breeze.

Traditionally, rillettes involve cooking meat low & slow in fat until it’s meltingly tender, then packing it in jars and covering it with more fat to seal out contaminants. This version uses already-cooked meat, so while the flavor might be a little less intense it’s much easier to make—and you’re doing justice to the animal by not wasting anything. And it’s still ridiculously tasty.