I like to spend about zero time in the kitchen. I wasn’t born with the ‘love to cook’ gene, and there are just so many other things I’d rather be doing than preparing food.
To that end, I bought myself a Ninja
I can’t say enough great things about my Ninja, y’all! I’ve used it to make two protein shakes a day, homemade salsa, and cut up all sorts of vegetables. In fact, there’s nothing that I haven’t thrown at it that it doesn’t completely chop up in seconds.
I saw my friend Beckie mention that she shreds her chicken in a stand mixer with a paddle instead of using a fork like people have been doing since the beginning of time. I don’t have a stand mixer, but I wanted to see if my Ninja was up to the challenge. Y’all, it shredded a chicken breast in 5 seconds.
I begin by boiling a few chicken breasts. If you don’t know how to do that (which I honestly didn’t, so no worries), it’s really easy. Wash your chicken, put it in a pot and fill with water until the chicken is covered. Then, bring it to an uncovered boil over medium high heat. Once that’s roaring, reduce the heat, cover and let cook for 20 minutes.
Okay, back to the Ninja. Install the dough blade into the food processing bowl. Unlike the other blades that came with my Ninja, this one is doesn’t have any knives. I think if you used a bladed knife, it would just pulverize the chicken.
When the chicken is finished boiling, remove the chicken breasts from the water and immediately put them into the Ninja. The key to this working well is that the chicken must still be hot. Depending on the size of the breasts, I can put one or two in the bowl. Lock the top on the bowl and then lock the bowl onto the Ninja. Then, all you have to do is press the Pulse button a couple of times.
The result is perfectly shredded chicken in seconds.
I love doing chicken like this, because it’s so easy to add to other recipes. Last night, I shredded five chicken breasts. We used some in a pasta dish and will use the rest to make tacos for another meal. That helps me because there is so little chicken prep on my part to do this, and it lasts us for a few days. Hooray for lazy food prep!
How do you shred chicken?
What a great idea! I too just recently got a Ninja and have found so many uses! We also grind coffee beans in the single serve cups and I grind flax seed and other small stuff too. Thanks for the idea!
I discovered a few years ago that I could shred chicken in my Kitchenaid mixer. I will never go back to shredding it by hand! Ain’t nobody got time for that.
PS: I’m going to have to teach you how to cook, apparently 🙂
Tried this and it is a great discovery! Thank you so much. My daughter-in-law was thinking she wanted to invent an electric chicken shredder, I sent this to her and said sorry it’s been done! She was really bummed out but now has a good reason to get the Ninja. Hot spit, it “makelyed” my day.
This is BRILLIANT!! I love simple and seemingly “duh” type discoveries like this. I laugh because they seem so obvious after the fact, but it’s great because they’re so easy to implement!
I smell shredded pork! 😀
This is awesome. Very helpful. I’ve had a ninja for a while but never thought about shredding chicken in it. I’ve been wasting my time shredding by hand
I was dreading doing some chicken shredding after having some sit in a crockpot all day with taco seasoning and hot sauce, so I googled a bit to find out if I could use my Ninja blender for it. Found that, yeah, a regular blender will just kinda turn it into a mush, but I found this post of yours and gave it a whirl.
Oh. My. Gawd. It shreds to perfection.
My shredded BBQ intake is going to quadruple now, I swear.
Score!! I love the Internet! Thanks
Thank YOU! I didn’t want to drag out the kitchen aid and I think the Ninja might actually work better!!
So I am pregnant and started craving beef and chicken enchiladas… well I make them from scratch, which can take hours due to shredding the meat by hand. I am not so keen on that, lol. I looked up ways to shred the meat fast and everyone was talking about hand mixers. Well, I have one but no paddle attachment, wanna talk about bummed? Because I about cried!! I was looking at my ninja and thought, well maybe I could use it without pulverizing the meat? Used it to make chicken salad once lol, but ended up with almost chicken salad pasta lol. Then I saw your post! I am so excited that I’m going to do it as soon as my meats are done!! Honestly just made my night!! Thank you for braving this one to save a pregnant womans life!! Lol.
Chicken salad paste, not pasta.. autocorrect is evil.
Will this chop instead of shred cooked chicken breasts. My husband is on a special diet that requires food to be chopped. He cannot chew shredded chicken.
Thank you! I could not find the books that came with my Ninja after I moved and could not figure out how to shred the chicken not macerate it. It worked perfectly!