Sure, you can slow cook chicken breasts with just two ingredients, chicken and water. It’s fine, it’s no-frills and it does yield a protein that is, ahem, serviceable to the body (but less so to the taste buds). However, my recipe for Honey Garlic Slow Cooker Shredded Chicken is soooo much more flavorful, with really not any significant additional effort.

While ever-so-slightly sweet and gar-lip-licking good, the seasonings are still mild enough to make this easy Crock Pot chicken recipe versatile enough for a myriad of meal prep plans. Read on to get all the easy-peasy details.

The beauty of using your slow cooker to prep proteins is that you can dump in the ingredients first thing in the morning, push a few buttons, and then just walk away to live an exciting life outside the kitchen! With two teenage boys, one young-adult male, an always-hungry husband and my own empty leg, I could literally be making, serving and cleaning-up meals from dawn to dusk if I didn’t safeguard some of my time with slow cooking and meal prepping.

When it comes to chicken, I stick with boneless, skinless breasts to keep it convenient. Also, more is “more better” in my book, so I always buy the biggest tray of chicken breasts that I can find at the market or warehouse club – around 6 pounds is my typical score for the slow cooker.  If more or less, I can always adjust my spices and cooking liquids – about ½ cup liquid for every pound of chicken, the spices can usually be eyeballed.

My recipe for Honey Garlic Slow Cooker Shredded Chicken couldn’t be simpler, just toss in chicken, cover with liquid, sprinkle with spices, drizzle with honey and then slow cook on low for approximately 8 hours. Drain off cooking liquid, let cool until warm enough to shred with a fork or your fingers. Pile up on a sandwich, toss in pasta, put in a taco, sweet potato or spring roll. Add a bolder sauce, ex post facto. The possibilities are endless.

If there are leftovers, and I hope you planned for that. Simply place the appropriate portion sized amount in a zip-top freezer back and store in the freezer for up to 6 months. As for serving sizes, 4 ounces per person is standard and will give you in the ball park of 25g protein. I usually do some single-serve bags with 4-ounces and a few filled with 1 lb to serve four. Oh yeah, those plastic bag liners for the slow cooker are one little luxury item I can’t live without – a no-scrub clean-up makes me smile ear to ear.

Check out this follow up post to learn how to use Honey Garlic Slow Cooker Shredded Chicken in an EPIC CHICKEN & ROAST VEGGIE MEAL PREP PLAN that creates 16 meals from 4 different recipes.

How do you do chicken in the slow cooker? Do you you like to meal prep just the meat, or prepare the whole meal before freezing? What is your favorite dish using shredding chicken breast? Please share in the comments, I’m always looking for new ideas – XOXO, Jennifer 

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Honey Garlic Slow Cooker Shredded Chicken - Meal Prep Winner!

Prep Time

5 mins

Cook Time

8 hrs

Total Time

8 hrs 5 mins

 

This healthy, hands-off chicken recipe creates a pile of shredded protein that you can use a variety of recipes or freeze in individual portions for use later.

Course: Main Dish

Cuisine: American

Servings: 24 servings

Ingredients

• 3 cups chicken broth or water will suffice
• 6 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breast
• 1/4 cup dried onion flakes or 1/2 finely chopped onion
• 2 tablespoons finely minced garlic
• 1/4 cup fresh parsley chopped
• 1/3 cup honey
• salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Use 8 quart capacity slow cooker and insert disposable plastic liner, if desired.
2. Add chicken broth to slow cooker. Next add 1/2 of chicken breasts and sprinkle with 1/2 of the spices and drizzle with 1/2 of the honey.
3. Add remaining chicken on top of this and sprinkle, drizzle with remaining ingredients.
4. Add lid to slow cooker and program for 5 - 6 hours of cooking on "high" or 8 - 10 hours of cooking on "low". Chicken is done when it has reached and internal temperature of 165 F degrees.
5. Drain and discard cooking liquid. Transfer chicken to rimmed baking sheet, let cool for 10 minutes or until able to handle.
6. Use fingers or fork to shred into wispy pieces. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
7. East "as is" or use in the recipe of your choice.
8. Store leftovers in air-tight container in fridge for 4 days and in freezer for up to 6 months.