easy way to shred chicken

Here is a cooking tip that I recently discovered and its quite the time saver.

You can shred chicken with a stand mixer.

I used to shred the cooked chicken using two forks -- hold the chicken with one fork and scrape pieces with the other one until it was shredded.   It was time consuming and quite the workout.   I made a double batch of a casserole once - one for us, one for our neighbors who'd just had a baby - and thought my arms might fall off from all the chicken shredding.

I read (on a blog I'm pretty sure) that you could shred chicken with a stand mixer, and I had to try it.
It works SO WELL!  Just cook the chicken as you usually would and then drop it in the bowl and let the large paddle do the work for you.   It didn't seem like it would work at first -- it just pushes the pieces around ,but give it a little time and it does work!

I wish I'd thought to take a photo of before/after, here is the blog I think I read it on - they did put up a photo, and apparently its on pinterest too.

We've done it twice now - once for the casserole and once this week for chicken tortilla soup.   Kevin said the soup was better this way (and I have to agree) since the chicken was all the same size and you got the same amount in every bite.

I'm going to be on the lookout for recipes calling for shredded chicken now!