Easy Way to Shred Chicken - Kitchen Tip

I don't know how you shred your chicken, but I've been a two-fork kind of gal. You pull and pull until it's shredded into whatever sized chunks you want.

Sometimes that could take awhile, especially if I had cooked up a bunch of chicken at one time to freeze for later. Today was chicken cooking day. I threw several chicken breasts in the crockpot and let them cook on low all day, intending to work my two-fork magic on them later.

Then I came across this tip on Simply Healthy Family. Use your stand mixer to shred the chicken instead of all that two-fork work! I guess I never really considered such a thing before because I don't use my mixer to shred things. It's a mixer, not a shredder, right? But honestly, this worked better than I could have hoped.

Here's what you do.

Throw the warm chicken in the bowl of your mixer. I took mine straight out of the crockpot and tossed it in. You definitely want to use warm or even hot chicken, because it's soft and tender. Do not try this with cold chicken.


Using the paddle attachment, turn the mixer on low speed for a few seconds, then move up to a medium speed, careful not to let the chicken fly out of the bowl. Because it will if you get that paddle going too fast. This is what my chicken looked like after 20 seconds or so.


I gave it another 10 seconds and got a pile of nicely shredded chicken.


There were a few larger pieces, so I just used a pair of tongs to break them up (no forks necessary).


I was amazed at how easy it was to shred 6 chicken breasts in under a minute! This task would have normally taken me 15-20 minutes, depending on how many times I got interrupted. I saved some of the chicken for use later in the week, then bagged up and froze the rest. Easy peasy!

For more helpful hints, visit Works for Me Wednesday over at We Are THAT Family.