How to Make Shredded Chicken: Slow Cooker, Stovetop, and Oven

Canned chicken and store-bought rotisserie chicken are both useful for making a quick dinner, and there’s nothing wrong with either one on a busy night. But they can have a lot of sodium. Most rotisserie chickens are brined or injected with a salt solution before roasting, and canned chicken is packed in salted liquid, so the sodium content can climb quickly once you add sauce, cheese, or seasoning. Cooking chicken yourself puts control over sodium in your hands, which makes a difference if you’re watching your blood pressure or following a low sodium diet.

Cost is another good reason to make a batch of shredded chicken at home. Boneless skinless chicken breast is one of the leanest and most affordable proteins in the store, and 2 pounds can be stretched into four or five different meals without it tasting like you’re eating the same thing over and over. Our chicken meal prep guide goes deeper on how to build a week of meals around this versatile and inexpensive protein.

Boneless skinless chicken breasts are a popular choice for making shredded chicken. They’re lean, shred well, and take on whatever seasoning you add. The downside is that they have very little fat, so the chicken goes from tender to dry quickly if you cook it too long.

Boneless skinless thighs are a better pick for shredding if you don’t like dry chicken. They have more fat and connective tissue so they stay moist through a longer cook and they’re far more forgiving if you lose track of time. They may be cheaper, too. You can use them anywhere a recipe calls for shredded chicken breast. In saucy dishes like tacos, chili, or enchiladas, you probably won’t even notice the difference.

When it comes to quantity, you’ll find that 1 pound of raw boneless skinless chicken gives you roughly 2 to 3 cups of shredded meat, depending on how loosely you pack it. Cooking 2 pounds is a good size for most families and fits comfortably in a 6-quart slow cooker.

Use this method when you have a few hours and don’t want to think about dinner in the meantime. It also gives you the most tender result, because low steady heat breaks down connective tissue in a way that fast cooking doesn’t.

Here’s the process:

1. Put 1½ to 2 pounds of boneless skinless chicken breasts or thighs in the bottom of a slow cooker in a single layer. Crowding them can result in them cooking unevenly, so move up to a bigger crockpot if you’re doubling the batch.
2. Add about ½ cup of low sodium chicken broth or water. You don’t need to cover the chicken. It releases plenty of its own liquid as it cooks, and too much at the start waters down the flavor.
3. Season it. Salt-free taco seasoning, garlic powder, onion powder, smoked paprika, and black pepper all work well. So does a couple of cloves of smashed garlic with half a sliced onion.
4. Cover and cook on low for 3 to 4 hours, or on high for 1½ to 2 hours. Chicken is safe to eat at an internal temperature of 165°F, though it pulls apart more easily when it’s closer to 175°F. Thighs can go to 185°F and continue to get more tender.
5. Shred the chicken in the pot, then let it sit in the cooking liquid for 5 or 10 minutes before you serve it so it reabsorbs some of what it lost.

If you’d rather see how this is done than read about it, watch our test kitchen video at the top of the page on how to slow cook shredded chicken. It runs through the whole process, including what the chicken should look like when it’s ready to shred.

A word of caution on timing. Plenty of slow cooker recipes call for 6 to 8 hours on low, which works for a tough cut of meat like pork shoulder. Chicken breast will likely be dry and chalky by hour 6. If you need it to sit longer than 4 hours, use thighs, or set the cooker to switch to warm.

The slow cooker isn’t always the right answer, especially on a weeknight when dinner needs to be ready in half an hour. These four methods all work, and each one suits a different situation.

However you cooked it, shred the chicken while it’s still warm. Warm meat separates along the grain easily and cold meat is stubborn, so let refrigerated chicken come to room temperature or warm it gently first.

Here are four methods for shredding chicken, from the most controlled to the fastest:

• A pair of forks. Hold the chicken steady with one fork and pull away from it with the other, working with the grain. It takes a few minutes. It also gives you the nicest texture, with long strands instead of mush.
• Your hands. Once the chicken has cooled enough to handle, this goes faster than forks. You can also feel any bits of cartilage or fat as you work so you can discard them. Wear clean food-safe gloves if it’s still hot.
• A hand mixer. Put the chicken in a deep bowl and start the mixer on low. It’s shredded in about 20 seconds. Go slowly, because it’s easy to overdo and end up with something closer to paste.
• A stand mixer. Use the paddle attachment on low speed for 15 to 20 seconds. This is best used for a big batch, and it’s the fastest method for getting lots of chicken to shred.

The mixer methods work well as long as you don’t overdo it. Check at 15 seconds and then run it longer only if you need to, because you can always shred more but you can’t undo it when you’ve overshred the chicken and turned it into mush.

Dry shredded chicken usually comes down to two things, and both are fixable.

The first is overcooking. Chicken breast has almost no fat to protect it, and every minute past 165°F pushes out more moisture. We encourage you to use a thermometer instead of guessing and pull the chicken as soon as it hits the proper temperature. An instant-read thermometer is inexpensive, and it may be the most useful tool you can buy for cooking chicken well.

The second is draining. Shredding roughly triples the surface area, so the meat dries out quickly once it’s out of any liquid. Leave it in the cooking liquid, or toss it with a few spoonfuls of broth once it’s shredded. In a saucy dish you may not notice how dry it can become, but in a sandwich or a salad, you will.

If you’re working with breast meat, a teaspoon of olive oil tossed in with the seasoning helps as well. A little fat coats the strands and keeps them from clumping together in the refrigerator.

You can season the chicken before cooking, after shredding, or both, and each method does something different.

Aromatics and rubs that go in before cooking, like garlic, onion, bay leaf, and smoked paprika, flavor the meat from the inside and leave you with a good neutral base. Seasoning added after shredding sits on the surface where you taste it right away, so that’s where a bright finish belongs: lime juice, fresh cilantro, a spoonful of salsa, or a splash of hot sauce.

If you want one batch to cover several different meals, cook it plain or close to it and season each portion as you go. A batch heavily seasoned for tacos is great in tacos but won’t work in chicken salad.

One note on salt. Most commercial taco and fajita seasoning packets contain a few hundred milligrams of sodium per serving. Salt-free blends do the same job, and when you build flavor with garlic, cumin, oregano, citrus, and vinegar, a small pinch of salt at the end is enough to add all the taste you need. Our dietitians write more about that trade-off in our low sodium chicken recipes collection.

Cooked shredded chicken keeps for 3 to 4 days in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Get it in there within 2 hours of cooking, or within 1 hour if the kitchen is above 90°F, and spread it out in a shallow container so it chills all the way through instead of staying warm in the middle. Our guide to cooling food down safely explains the reasoning, and our complete guide to storing leftovers covers the rest.

For the freezer, portion the chicken into the amounts you’ll use, press the air out, and freeze it flat with a few spoonfuls of cooking liquid, which protects it from freezer burn and gives you much better texture later. It holds up well for about 4 months. Thaw it overnight in the refrigerator.

Once you have a system for cooking shredded chicken, all you need to do is to decide what to use it in. Here are a few ideas:

• Wondering what else to do with your cooked chicken? Our roundup of healthy shredded chicken recipes covers soups, casseroles, sandwiches, and more.
• Trying to build meals around protein? Our high protein chicken meals collection is a good place to start.
• Already have the slow cooker out? Our heart healthy slow cooker recipes will give you more ideas of what to make.

All of our recipes are developed and tested in the Health eCooks Recipe Test Kitchen and reviewed by our registered dietitians before they’re published.