Stress-Free Cooking Installment 5: Mexican Shredded Chicken

This is, without a doubt, my new favorite recipe to make for three reasons: (1) it’s SO easy, (2) it makes a LOT and (3) you can use the chicken in several different ways so you’re not having the same meal over and over again.

And of course, you can freeze any leftover chicken and pull it out of the freezer a few weeks later for a delicious meal.

Also, this meal is very economical. I get the chicken on sale for about $2/lb, so I usually spend about $6 for all of the ingredients shown below and we get several meals out of it.

Ingredients

• 2 lb boneless skinless chicken breast
• Two 14.5 oz cans diced tomatoes
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• A big pinch of oregano

Directions

This couldn’t be simpler. Mix all ingredients (besides chicken) together and put in a slow cooker or a baking dish.  Then nestle the chicken breasts in the tomato mixture. I have cooked this in a covered baking dish in a 325 degree oven for about 4 hours or you can put it in your slow cooker on low for 4-6 hours. When the 4 hours is up, before you shred the chicken, you probably want to remove some of the sauce because it will be too much for the amount of chicken you have. You can always add some back in after you shred the chicken if you think it’s not moist enough. Anyway, shred the chicken and put it back in the sauce, and voilà, there is your Mexican shredded chicken!

Our favorite meals using this chicken:

Tacos

We love to have this in tacos, whether it’s soft tacos on corn tortillas or the good old-fashioned hard taco shells (I love the shredded chicken in the crispy, hard taco shell). Top with whatever toppings you normally like on tacos; we use shredded cheese, shredded lettuce and a delicious white cream sauce (recipe courtesy of my sister, Jenny, shown here):

• ½ cup mayo
• ¼ – ½ cup Mexican crema sauce (or regular sour cream)
• ¼ cup milk
• 1 TBS Sriracha
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• Juice of ½ lime

Quesadillas

Get some flour tortillas and put a good layer of the shredded chicken and cheese on one tortilla. Top with another tortilla. If you don’t have a quesadilla maker, heat some oil in a pan on medium high. Put the quesadilla in and flip when the first side has browned. Also, add in whatever else you like to the quesadillas, sometimes I add red pepper and/or frozen corn (thawed).

Burritos

Again, use a flour tortilla.   Make some white, brown or Mexican rice on the side. Put rice, shredded chicken, beans, cheese, chopped tomato and whatever other toppings you’d like into a warmed tortilla. Roll it up and enjoy!

Of course, there are a ton of other ways you can use it. Use your imagination! You will have a ton of chicken from this recipe and it’s delicious. Enjoy!