The start of the school year is absolute chaos in our house. Between Back to School nights, fall festivities, and generally just getting in the grove of our school year routine leaves us little to no time to prepare weekly dinners. Well, last week I found the PERFECT dinner meal hack to give you all easy and delicious meals that lasts you the WEEK!
You can literally get dinner on the table in under ten minutes. You can’t even make mac and cheese from a box that quickly! The answer to your dinner time woes is…shredded chicken from the instant pot! This Instant Pot Shredded Chicken is perfectly moist, perfectly seasoned, and it stores or freezes perfectly for your weekly meal prep! It’s a healthy addition to soups, salads, pastas or sandwiches throughout the week.
Instant Pot Shredded Chicken from Nichole B. Miller on Vimeo.
How to Make Instant Pot Shredded Chicken:
I know that this is such an easy recipe that most of you probably don’t need tips on how to make shredded chicken, but there are a few things that I think are key so I’m going to drop some hints anyway!
- Make sure you add enough liquid. The liquid is what makes for a tender, flavorful shredded or “pulled” chicken. I usually use boxed broth that I have on hand.
- Season well. You don’t want to go overboard, but keep in mind that meat is best seasoned during the cooking process.
- Breasts or thighs? You can use either boneless chicken breasts or chicken thighs or throw some of each in all together! I usually use a mixture or get whatever is cheapest at the store.
Ingredients
- 1 box of chicken broth
- 3/4 teaspoon seasoning salt
- 1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts or a package of thighs
- Place broth, seasoning salt, Italian seasoning and pepper into the Instant Pot inner pot. Stir.
- Add the chicken breasts or thighs and put the lid on.
- Turn valve to sealing and select MEAT. It will take about 10 minutes to come to pressure and start counting down.
- Once the cook time is over, turn the Instant Pot off and let the pressure release naturally for 10 minutes
- Open the lid and drain about half of the liquid. Shred the chicken breasts with the remaining liquid in the pot with two forks, and serve as desired. To freeze, let cool to room temperature before placing in freezer bags.
- I store the chicken in glass containers to use for the week.
This week we made three easy and super fast recipes with our shredded chicken.
1. Baked Chicken Enchiladas
We mixed about a cup of shredded chicken with black beans, green chiles, salsa, and sour cream and wrapped the yummy mixture in flour tortillas. Then we Covered the tortillas (you could totally use gluten free corn tortillas) with cheese and canned enchilada sauce and baked until they were ooey, gooey and delicious! This is the perfect meal to serve with company because all the prep is done beforehand. It also makes wonderful leftovers and I enjoyed my enchiladas at work twice that week.
2. Chicken Caesar Salad
We love Caesar salad in our house. It’s one of the few salads that my daughters eat so we definitely make it on repeat. I usually grill the chicken but I decided to make our usual salad with the shredded chicken and it turned out amazing and cut my meal prep in half! I just tossed cut up romaine with croutons (we love the ones from Stew Leonard’s), Parmesan cheese, bottled Caesar dressing, and about a cup of shredded chicken. We had some sourdough bread that was about to go stale so my daughter helped me make some Texas garlic toast and the meal was a huge success.
3. Pulled “Chicken” Sliders
This actually may be my favorite meal that we made with the shredded chicken. I took the remaining shredded chicken and mixed it with a ½ cup of Sweet Baby Rays BBQ sauce. Then we spooned the mixture onto toasted Martin’s Potato bun sliders. We steamed some frozen Trader Joe’s broccoli and dinner was on the table in 5 minutes!
Other recipes we have made with Instant Pot Shredded Chicken:
- Nachos
- Chicken noodle soup
- Taco salad
- Cobb Salad
- Quesadillas
- Buffalo chicken dip
- Chicken fried rice
- Teriyaki rice bowls
- Chicken & cheddar roll ups
- Black bean and chicken soup
- Pesto chicken pasta
Have you ever made Instant Pot Shredded Chicken? Share your recipes in the comments!