What if you could have fast shredded chicken prepped for an entire week? Having a cooked protein source ready go at a moment’s notice can make life so much easier. This hack for food prep has saved our family countless hours during the week . Plus, it is super easy to multi-task during the time it cooks!
The weekends aren’t just for rest around our house. As a matter of fact, rest is often the last thing on the agenda as we play catch-up with ourselves from the week. Since every week seems to get more busy than we plan, we began pre-cooking lots of options over the weekends.
What protein worked best for us? Chicken.
Why should you keep fast shredded chicken on hand?
In 45 minutes while the laundry is being folded, we have three pounds of chicken breast ready to be shredded and divided into portions. Some portions go into small containers to wait in the freezer until it starts to thaw in lunchboxes. A few separate servings go into the fridge for more immediate use, and the rest is set aside for a bigger family dinner.
The amount of chicken we cook really depends on what meals are planned for the week. The beauty of advanced planning is that we always have a solid meal that allows for good BG numbers and (fingers crossed!) good, solid sleep.
Does that mean that I cook every meal. No way! But, I assemble most of our meals. The key to conserving time is the word “assemble.” When the majority of the cooking has already been accomplished, mixing ingredients to warm up or cook into a recipe is so much easier. A meal using chicken that is ready-to-go is already halfway to completion!
Drive-through dinner still happens, and it happens quite often. However, we have solid options easily available if we need it. For example, our Easy Chicken Enchiladas recipe assembles very quickly with the chicken prepared ahead of time ready to mix with the filling.
What is the number 1 way to make fast shredded chicken?
A slow cooker or instant pressure cooker makes prep for future meals super easy. Not only does it cut the cooking time of the meal you make later in half, but it also only takes two easy ingredients.
Extra ingredients like chicken broth or seasoning could definitely be added, but overall I like to leave the chicken as plain as possible. While Mexican and Italian recipes may have some spices that are similar, cooking a very plain batch of protein allows for multiple customizations easily in future meals.
For my instant pressure cooker, I add a three pound bag of frozen, skinless chicken breast or skinless thighs and a cup of water- only two ingredients. If you choose a five pound bag of chicken, just increase the amount of water by a half a cup or so. Make sure you use at least the minimum amount of water needed to properly cook the chicken.
Then, on an instant pressure cooker, just close the lid and press the poultry setting. Voila! Chicken and approximately 2 cups of chicken broth are fully cooked and ready to store for the week in less than an hour.
If you use a slow cooker, then the process is the same. Add the cover to the pot and set it to slow cook for 4-8 hours depending on the amount of chicken you are using. The day (or night) is still free for you to multi-task or binge watch the latest season of your favorite show.
After the chicken is cooked, drain the broth into a container for the fridge and shred the chicken with a hand mixer (or two forks) right in the bowl.
The amount of broth will depend upon the amount of water used. Also, unless your chicken was seasoned or brined before it was frozen, the broth is likely to have very little salt as compared to the boxed or canned varieties purchased at the grocery store.
Again, I like a blank slate when I cook, so having broth I can season with celery salt, garlic salt, seasoning salt, etc. appeals to me. Instead of adding extra salt to a salty broth, I can flavor the broth specifically for a dish and keep the sodium levels in check as well.
Recipe options?
The sky is the limit! Chicken tacos, bbq chicken sliders, Asian chicken stir-fry, chicken burrito bowls, chicken salad, chicken and dumplings… No matter how you choose to use the chicken, broth or both, you have managed to trim quite a bit of time off of many meals. Maybe the drive-through will become a little less necessary and a lot more fun!
Try out your newest time-saving hack in these recipes:
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