Choose the Chicken

• Pick up a baked or roasted chicken at the deli counter or make extra one night you're serving chicken and freeze it until you make chicken cacciatore. Fried chicken doesn't work as well as baked or roasted. The crunchy coating comes off in the sauce or gets soggy. Grilled chicken lends a smoky flavor to the sauce. Barbecue chicken adds the flavor of the barbecue to the dish. One other option is to use chicken from the deli -- the kind for sandwiches -- and ask to have it cut into 1-inch cubes, rather than slices.

Prepare the Chicken

• Cut the chicken, no matter how it's pre-cooked, into serving-size pieces. For example, cut a whole roasted chicken into two thighs, two drumsticks and two breast halves. Save the wings and backbone to make chicken stock another day, because they don't have much meat on them. Another alternative is to remove the skin and bones from each chicken piece and chop the meat into chunks or shreds.

It's All In The Sauce

• Because the chicken adds flavor to the sauce while the chicken cooks, replace that flavor by adding sodium-free chicken bouillon, or powder, to commercially prepared tomato pasta sauce. Make your own cacciatore sauce by adding a handful of herbs and seasonings, such as garlic, onions, basil or oregano and a good pinch each of red pepper flakes and fennel seeds, to 2 cups of tomato sauce or crushed tomatoes. You could use hot sauce instead of red pepper flakes or cayenne pepper. If you don't have fennel seeds, use anise seed or chopped tarragon, both of which have the licorice flavor of fennel seeds. Add the chicken bouillon to the sauce and simmer with the pre-cooked chicken for 20 minutes. The chicken should reach an internal temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit. Check with an instant-read thermometer placed in the meat of the chicken but not touching the bone.

More Than the Cacciatore

• Chicken cacciatore is not usually served by itself. Spaghetti is the classic choice to soak up the sauce. If you're in a hurry, use angel hair pasta instead, it cooks more quickly than the thicker spaghetti. Spaghetti can be a challenge to maneuver with all the twirling of strands around a fork and slurping. Try bow tie or rigatoni pasta instead. Whole-wheat pasta is another option, it's darker than pasta made with semolina flour and chewier. Cook the pasta until it's tender but not mushy. If pasta isn't your passion, serve the chicken and sauce over white rice, brown rice, quinoa or crusty bread.