Easy Make Ahead Recipe: Shredded Chicken

When it comes to meals, sometimes it’s not always easy to get a healthy dinner on the table with my sanity in tact. Even though I do meal plan as much as possible, as we all know, some days things just don’t go as planned.

Like when I forget to thaw out the protein for dinner. Or I just didn’t get a chance to throw the ingredients in the Vita Clay slow cooker that morning. Or I had to work a little bit later than normal and then there’s not enough time to prepare dinner. There’s multiple scenarios that can render my best dinner plans useless.

In those situations it might seem easy to succumb to ultra processed food, or worse – fast food – that’s full of the ingredients that we don’t want to be putting in our body. Over the years I’ve managed to develop some quick-fast-in-a-hurry dishes that are both satisfying and don’t take a lot of time.

One thing I have in my arsenal to help me? A freezer stash of cooked and shredded chicken. It takes a short time to thaw out and it can make it that much easier to pull dinner together. I’ve used it to stuff fajitas and tacos. I’ve used it to top salads or even add to soups.

I’ve made chicken salad in 15 minutes with pre-cooked shredded chicken. We’ve added shredded chicken to homemade pizzas that can be made in 10 minutes by adding sauce, cheese and toppings to a premade pizza crust like Capello’s. 

Pre-cooked shredded chicken has saved me on many occasions and I highly recommend having a small freezer stash for those days when dinner plans don’t go as planned or you just don’t feel like cooking.

Be sure to  use organic chicken whenever possible. I personally use chicken breasts and wrap the shredded chicken in parchment paper and then transfer to a plastic ziplock bag. I have a “thing” about plastic touching food for long periods of time which is the reason for the parchment paper. On the other hand the ziplock bags are a space saver. While I love glass containers for most food storage this works best for saving on freezer space.

I hope that the recipe below is helpful for you! Enjoy!

[tasty-recipe id=”10728″]