For something different for your next picnic or get together with friends, try serving these easy lettuce wraps before your meal.
Lettuce wrap appetizers are quick to put together – especially since you use rotisserie chicken pieces instead of cooking up the meat. Plus, you can get your family, or guests, involved in the preparations. Ask one person to wash and dry the lettuce leaves. There are a couple different kinds of lettuce that work well. The best variety is butter (also called Boston); these soft leaves are pliable so that you can roll them up like you would a flour tortilla. Butter lettuce is usually packaged with the roots still attached, so you’ll need to cut those off before washing. Another option is romaine lettuce, but it doesn’t roll well – so you’d need to serve the wraps more like tacos.
To bring an Asian spin to the rotisserie chicken, I saute it with thick, tangy hoisin sauce (again, you can even ask someone else to do this). You can find this sauce in the Asian section at the grocery store. I suggest 1 tablespoon per 1 cup meat, but you can add more if you want the filling saucier.
Then, it’s assembly time: Simply place a couple tablespoons of filling in the middle of each lettuce leaf. You can then roll them up – or ask a guest to – as you would a burrito (two opposite sides tucked in, and then roll from the opposite side) – or you can serve them more like a taco. Either way, you’ll want to add a bit of shredded carrots for crunch along with slivers of green onions.
