I have been cooking a lot lately. Meal prepping for my work lunches. This is a recipe I have pulled together from a couple other recipes and trial and error. Copyright (c) Chad Thomas – All Rights Reserved.

Instant Pot Shredded Chicken Breasts

Ingredients:

1 package of boneless skinless chicken breasts (usually 4 or 5 in a package)

1 bottle of Claude’s Mesquite barbeque Meat Marinade

1 bottle HEB brand Carolina style BBQ sauce

1 cup of chicken stock

Meat Church Holy Voodoo seasoning

Olive Oil

Preparation:

Trim the chicken breasts to remove all fatty pieces and/or pieces you do not like seeing. Sometimes I find small pieces of bone that need to be removed.

Place the chicken breasts in a food safe/storage container with the marinade. Try to submerge the chicken completely if you can. The minimum for marinade I have read and done is 4 hours. I have been marinating the chicken breasts overnight from 8 to 12 hours. Do not go longer than this.

After the allotted time you have chosen to marinate, remove the chicken breasts from the marinade, rinse off with cold water to remove excess marinade. Pat the chicken breasts dry with paper towels.

Place chicken breasts on a plate or cooking sheet big enough to hold all of them. Now generously season the side of the chicken breasts that is facing up. Then flip them and generously season that side. Once both sides are seasoned, place the chicken breasts in the refrigerator for up to 15 to 30 minutes to let them sit and absorb the seasoning.

Once the time has passed for letting the chicken breasts sit with the seasoning, remove from the refrigerator.

Cook:

Plug in the instant pot and remove the lid. Place enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the pot.

Next place the chicken breasts into the pot. Depending on the size of your instant pot, the breasts may touch or lay on each other. I have found this to be OK and have not had any issues.

Now pour the cup of chicken stock into the instant pot and the entire bottle of BBQ sauce.

Put the lid on and secure it. Set your instant pot to pressure cook and a time of 20 minutes. Then press start. After the time is finished, I let the instant pot depressurize on its own before I open the lid.

When the instant pot has depressurized, remove chicken breasts and shred. I use two large forks.

Variations:

The marinade, BBQ sauce and seasoning can be whatever you like.

Marinades I have used over a dozen different flavors and brands. Some make a big difference, others you cannot tell you used them.

With the BBQ sauce, I usually get a less expensive sauce since I am using the entire bottle in the pot. The HEB brand seems to fit that for me. It doesn't have to be the Carolina version, that was what I had at the time.

For seasonings, I have used plain salt and pepper, garlic powder and pepper and many different Meat Church or HEB seasonings.

The chicken stock can be substituted with beef stock or you can use chicken/beef broth. I have used all four types and I really do not have a preference. It’s whatever I grab out of the pantry or that is open in the refrigerator at the time. The low sodium versions can be used as well.

Notes:

The 20 minute time was the time I found that best works for me. The recipes I found online had 10 to 12 minutes, but that did not seem to cook the chicken to be tender enough. The time could vary up or down depending on the number of chicken breasts you are going to cook. The number I usually get in a package varies between 4 and 5. I have had 6 a couple of times and I feel the time could have been increased by a couple of minutes.

If you are cooking the chicken breasts to be eaten at that time, you could depressurize the instant pot yourself. I have never done that, so I do not know if that will make the chicken breasts any different.