Shredded Mexican Chicken Recipe - Quick Freezer Meal

With Back to School around the corner, I am already starting to get the schedule for my daughter's activities. Very often our schedule means that we need meal options that can either be prepared in a hurry, or that we can clean up quickly after dinner.

One way that I manage our need for quick meals is with Shredded Mexican Chicken, a staple in our family's freezer. I make a large batch in the slow cooker and freeze the extras. Then, when we are short on time I can pull a container out and have quick quesadillas, wraps, tacos, nachos, etc. My daughter has also requested chicken quesadillas for lunch. I make the quesadilla in the morning and leave it in a Thermos.

I don't really use a recipe for the Mexican Shredded Chicken. I use the same basic ingredients each time, but sometimes make adjustments.

Today, I used:

Ingredients & Finished Product

• a family pack of boneless, skinless chicken breasts (~4 lbs) - frozen or thawed
• 2 cans of diced tomatoes (14.5 oz) - undrained
• 1 can of whole corn (15.25 oz) - drained
• 1 can of diced green chiles (4oz)
• ~3/4 c diced Vidalia onion
• 4 heaping tablespoons of McCormick taco seasoning - roughly 2 packets 
• ~2 cups Minute Rice Brown Rice - uncooked

In a slow cooker, combine all ingredients except for the rice and cook on low for 6-8 hours or high for 4-5 hours. Today, I forgot to prepare the dish until lunch time, so I cooked it for ~4.5 hours on high. When the chicken is done, it will shred easily with a wooden spoon. After shredding the chicken, I allowed it to cook for about another 30 minutes on low to allow the shredded chicken to absorb some of the excess liquid and seasoning (sometimes I skip this additional cooking step). Finally, I added about the rice and cooked on high for 30 minutes. The rice will absorb most of the remaining liquid.

Shredded Mexican Chicken -
Ready to Use

My family is not a fan of beans, so I did not add any beans. However, it would be easy to add beans to the recipe. You can also adjust the spice level for your family's preference.

Tonight we are using it to make quesadillas, my daughter's favorite. However, it is so versatile. We also eat it on soft tacos, nachos, or on a salad - sometimes we each eat it a different way.

Building a Quesadilla

Clean up from subsequent meals is relatively minimal - a pan used to heat the tortillas or quesadillas or a cookie sheet for nachos (actually I usually use a baking mat, or you could use foil).

From today's batch, we had dinner, I filled 6 plastic freezer containers (3c each), and put enough for another dinner into the refrigerator.

Leftovers Cooling Before
Freezing