All You Need For Perfectly Tender Shredded Chicken Is This Appliance

Perfectly shredded chicken is one of the most useful things you can keep in your fridge for fast and easy weeknight dinners. Blend it with some tangy, tomato-based sauce to make delicious shredded chicken sloppy joes, stuff it inside tacos with homemade salsa, stir it into pasta, or make a refreshingly fruity chicken salad to enjoy with crackers. Of course, shredded chicken is also notorious for getting mealy and dry, which can significantly affect the flavor and your subsequent enjoyment of your food.

One of the best ways to ensure your shredded chicken is tender and moist is to make it yourself in the almighty slow cooker. This method is extremely similar to poaching, which produces juicy, tender shredded chicken almost every time. However, using the slow cooker is easier and doesn't take up your whole oven for hours at a time. Instead, you can simply plop your raw chicken into the slow cooker, add enough water or broth to cover, and set it on HIGH for around 3 hours, or use the LOW setting for up to 6 hours.

Since the chicken is cooked in warm liquid, it'll be juicier and more tender than shredded chicken that's been baked or roasted. Be sure to shred your chicken while it's still warm to make things easier, and store it in an airtight container in the refrigerator. To keep it moist as it cools, spoon some of the cooking liquid into the shredded chicken and gently toss to ensure it's evenly coated.

Preparing shredded chicken in the slow cooker is ridiculously easy, but you may need to do a little prep work depending on what kind of chicken you have on hand. Boneless, skinless cuts are best because you'll need to remove the skin and bones during the shredding process, anyway. Chicken skin cooked submerged in water won't get crispy; it'll just become unpleasantly rubbery. If using bone-in, skin-on cuts of meat, and save them to make homemade bone broth the right way.

It's also best to make sure your chicken is fully submerged in the liquid to ensure even cooking. Broth or stock infuses the chicken pieces with more flavor, but if all you have access to is water, your shredded chicken will be quite tasty with a sprinkle of salt and pepper added before cooking. You can also punch up the flavor in either cooking liquid by adding other seasonings to them, such as fresh or dried herbs (rosemary and thyme are delicious), raw garlic cloves, onion powder, and dried red pepper flakes or lemon slices for a bit of a kick.

Possibly the most exciting thing about making shredded chicken this way is that you basically get two products in one — succulent shredded chicken and beautiful, flavor-infused broth. After you've spooned a little broth into the shredded chicken for moisture, save the rest for making soup, gravy, and other sauces. You can even freeze it in ice cube trays for future recipes.