What Is Creamed chicken and How Can I Use It?
Creamed chicken is easier to cook with than it looks. Here's how to choose, use, and store it, what to substitute, and 2 recipes to get you started.
Key Points
- A dish, not a cut: cooked chicken folded into a creamy white sauce.
- Served over toast, split biscuits, pastry shells, noodles, or rice.
- Built on a butter-and-flour roux thickened with milk or chicken stock.
- Cook the flour before adding liquid, or the sauce tastes pasty.
- Stir the cooked chicken in at the end so it stays tender, not stringy.
What is creamed chicken?
Creamed chicken is a preparation, not a cut: cooked chicken folded into a creamy white sauce and served over something that catches the gravy. It is old-school comfort food, the kind of thing built from a leftover roast and whatever is in the cupboard.
The base is a simple béchamel or velouté. You make a roux of butter and flour, whisk in milk or chicken stock until it thickens, then stir in diced cooked chicken and warm it through.
How to Serve It
The sauce wants a sturdy, plain base underneath to soak it up. Buttered toast points are the classic, along with split biscuits, puff-pastry shells (vol-au-vents), egg noodles, or steamed rice.
Creamed Chicken Over Noodles ladles it straight onto wide noodles. The same filling, tucked under a pastry lid, becomes a pot pie, which is how Chicken Potpie with Biscuits handles it.
Peas, mushrooms, diced carrot, and a spoon of sherry or a squeeze of lemon are the usual additions. They cut the richness and keep the dish from tasting flat.
Making It Well
Get the sauce right and the dish is easy. Cook the raw flour in the butter for a minute or two before adding liquid, or the sauce tastes pasty. Add the milk gradually and whisk hard to keep it smooth.
The thickness is up to you: loose enough to pour over toast, thick enough to hold inside a pastry shell. Thin it with a splash more stock if it stiffens up.
Two mistakes spoil it.
A bland sauce needs real seasoning, so salt it properly and add pepper, nutmeg, or a hit of stock for depth. And since the chicken is already cooked, stir it in at the end; long simmering just dries it out and turns it stringy.
Notes on Ingredients
Any cooked chicken works, and leftover roast or rotisserie meat is ideal. Diced holds its shape better than shredded here.
Leftover creamed chicken keeps three to four days in the fridge. It thickens as it cools, so reheat gently with a splash of milk or stock to loosen it back to a sauce.
Quick facts
- In Chinese
- 奶油鸡
- British (UK) term
- Creamed chicken
- en français
- poulet à la crème
- en español
- pollo a la crema
Recipes using creamed chicken
There are 2 recipes that contain this ingredient.
Creamed Chicken Over Noodles
Creamed chicken served over buttered egg noodles with fresh parsley. A quick, comforting weeknight dinner using pre-made creamed chicken for speed.
Chicken Potpie with Biscuits
Chicken pot pie topped with drop biscuits instead of pastry crust. Creamed chicken, peas, and mushrooms baked under fluffy homemade biscuit dumplings.
