The Red Flag To Watch Out For When Buying Rotisserie Chicken

When it comes to ready-made food at the supermarket, it's hard to find something better than a good rotisserie chicken. It's hot and (hopefully) fresh, comes in a few flavors if you're lucky, is often more affordable, and provides enough protein to feed a crowd or to meal plan for a few days.

But rotisserie chickens aren't created equal, and the last thing you want to see when you get home is a sad, small chicken that tastes like it was spit-roasted yesterday. Thankfully there are several tips to help you spot the best, with an easy red flag to be on the lookout for: Extra juice in the container.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that extra juice in the container is a good thing, that it means the chicken is juicy too. What it actually means is the chicken was once juicy, but now it's all outside the chicken for you to see. And not only is the chicken dry, but those juices congeal on the exterior when they cool. There's a reason they don't make chicken-flavored Jell-O, though nothing's stopping you from putting your rotisserie chicken in some...

A quick visual inspection of the rotisserie chickens on offer can also catch other red flags. One helpful trick for chickens that you can't check the bottom of for juice is to closely examine the skin you can see. If it's holding tight to the meat still, it's fresh and juicy. If some spots are wrinkling up, try to find one that's entirely taught. Wrinkled skin, besides being a sign of no-longer-juicy chicken, is more soggy and chewy than light and crisp.

If you can physically examine the chicken, another red flag is if it's feeling light. Lighter rotisserie chickens get that way because their juices evaporate the longer they sit under a heat lamp. This can be a double-edged sword though, if your market sells its chickens by weight. A final tip to follow, stolen from Costco's policy, is to avoid any chickens made longer than two hours ago. They're still perfectly good to eat, as Costco shreds them and uses the meat elsewhere for example, but do you really want an older chicken when you can have a fresh one?