Chicken salad, enchiladas, tostadas, tetrazzini, chicken spaghetti, pot pie, taquitos, quesadillas. They all start with shredded chicken. When there’s a recipe sized bag ready to go in the freezer, the rest of the meal doesn’t seem so hard.
I bought frozen grilled chicken pieces from Aldi yesterday. My stress level had come to that. It was kind of gross and expensive. Not completely awful, but nothing like home marinated and grilled chicken. If your stress level makes frozen grilled chicken a necessity, no judgement here. But there is a simple way to have prepped chicken at home.
Fill your slow cooker up to 3/4 full with chicken breasts, then pour water into the spaces until it comes just even with the top of the chicken. Season with salt, pepper, celery seed, garlic powder, and onion powder. Slow cook for 4-5 hours. Remove chicken from the broth and let it cool until cool enough to handle.
Drop a breast or 2 (enough for your typical recipe) into a quart size freezer baggie, press out all the air and seal. Then mush it around with your fingers until it is all shredded up. Moosh the chicken flat, and freeze it. Simple, right?
You also have all that great chicken broth. If you use it up within the week, you can put it in a pitcher in your fridge. (We rarely have juice, so it’s safe at our house. If you often have lovely pitchers of stuff in your fridge, you should probably label it. Or hide around the corner with a video camera…..)
For those of you who need recipes. Here you go:
Ingredients
- 2 lb chicken breasts
- 8 cups water
- 3 tsp salt
- 1 tsp black pepper
- 1 tsp onion powder
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1/2 tsp celery seed
Instructions
- Combine everything in a 5 quart slow cooker.
- Cook on high for 4-5 hours. (No need to thaw the chicken first.)
- Remove chicken from broth and cool until cool enough to handle.
- Place 2 small or 1 large chicken chicken breast into each freezer bag and shred by mooshing the outside of the bag with your fingers.
- Remove all the air and freeze flat.
P.S. For those of you who are wondering, most brands of freezer bags are BPA free. I specifically checked Ziploc brand and Up and Up brands, but several others are safe too.
HI Angela,
I have been following for years now. I always like to be frugal. We work in a ministry so don’t make much money. I was just wondering what is your grocery bill a month these days? I have 4 children 3 teens and one preteen. The highest I have spent is 500 including all toiletries, cleaning supplies, pet food, personal care products. I have got it down to 350 but can’t stay there, It is usually 400 a month. I coupon and watch for markdowns on meat. I just need some more help or advice how you can keep it down. We have a garden as well.
Oh by they way. We went tent camping for 3 days and nights and it was very nice. I hope you enjoy your days camping.
Hi Julie, You are doing really great on your groceries. Our budget is $500 now for just food. I get most of my toiletries paid for with my Melaleuca business. And I trade kombucha for hamburger and eggs which helps a lot. I have 2 teenagers and a pre-teen now and am noticing an increase in food consumption.
I watched a YouTube video where they used a hand mixer to shred the chicken in the crock pot. I probably won’t get to try that method for a while since my freezer is full of whole roosters from our backyard flock! After getting the bones out most of the meat is pretty well shredded. If anyone else attemps, let me know how it went!
Kelly, I’ve seen that video too! It would be really fast, but I’m crazy messy with those mixers. I’d have chicken on the door knobs, on the ceiling, in the kid’s hair. Plus I love that the bag method has nothing to wash. Whole chickens is definitely the most economical way to go. Sometimes it’s just enough more work that I don’t do it and then end up with nothing for meal prep.
Hi Angela,
thanks again for another great tip. I will try this this weekend. I’m sure it will save me tons as some days I’m so tired when I get home at night I’m just tempted to go pick up carry out. Having the meat already prepared will make throwing a fast meal together a breeze
Hi Betty! I hope this makes your life easier. Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment 🙂