Can You Bread Cooked Chicken?

If you already have cooked chicken in the refrigerator but you’d like to bread it and cook it again, there are some things you should know.

For one, when you bread cooked chicken you’ll have to recook it to get it to taste just right. It won’t taste the same as it did the first time you cooked it, which is why you shouldn’t make a habit of this technique. Nevertheless, if you do it right the chicken will still taste pretty good.

How To Bread Chicken That Is Already Cooked

Man breading chicken after learning that you can bread cooked chicken

If you’d like to make a new dish from cooked chicken and want to bread it first, there are three main steps to follow. First, you’ll need to dip the chicken in buttermilk, then dip it in flour that has already been seasoned. After you dip the chicken in flour, dip it in breadcrumbs next. Make sure you shake off any excess flour before you cover the chicken in breadcrumbs. Use panko breadcrumbs for the best results.

You should use buttermilk instead of regular milk or an egg blend because buttermilk does a great job of helping the flour and breadcrumbs stick to the chicken. Remember, you want the chicken meat to taste as moist as possible, which requires the right ingredients. The buttermilk creates an almost glue-like surface that helps the other ingredients remain on the chicken, so when you bake or fry the chicken, it’ll come out nice and moist.

How To Bread Chicken the Right Way

Believe it or not, there is a right way and a wrong way to bread chicken.

Whether you’re cooking chicken breasts or chicken wings, pat the pieces dry with a paper towel. Then dip each piece of chicken in seasoned flour, and shake off the surplus flour. Next, place the chicken pieces in a mixture of a small amount of water and a few beaten eggs. Finally, dust all of the chicken with your breadcrumbs, making sure the pieces are completely coated.

As you can see, this process is a little different from the process used to bread chicken that has already been cooked. If you bread chicken correctly the first time and then have leftovers, it’s much easier to use the previous method to re-cook it. And you do have to re-cook the chicken if you want it to taste good. Keep in mind that you should only re-cook your chicken once. Otherwise, keeping the meat moist is almost impossible.

Fried chicken prepared after cook learned that you can bread cooked chicken
Don’t re-cook that chicken too many times or it’ll end up tasting awful.

Knowing Just What To Do

So we’ve determined how to bread chicken that is already cooked, but again, you cannot just re-cook the chicken numerous times. In terms of cooking, do it once with the leftovers and that’s it. Otherwise, it simply won’t taste good and will very likely be too dry. Remember how to bread your chicken properly and you’ll have a lot more luck. Also, you might want to add a lot of seasonings when you re-cook the leftover chicken because chicken that is already cooked tends to be tasteless, and you’ll want to remedy that.