From the Kitchen: BBQ Pulled Chicken

I hate meal prepping. Instead, I impulsively cook what I want everyday with very little planning. However, I grew up cooking in bulk for my family of 5 which leads to most of my recipes to last me days. So instead of prepping lunch boxes of identical meals to last the week, I love recipes like this BBQ Pulled Chicken that I can heat up throughout the week and eat in different meals. 

Ingredients: 

• 3 small-medium sized chicken breasts 
• ½ cup BBQ sauce of choice (I used Sweet Baby Ray’s Original BBQ Sauce) 
• ⅓ cup ketchup (optional) 
• ⅓ cup white vinegar (optional)
• Paprika 
• Salt 
• Pepper 
• Garlic powder 

Items needed: 

• Crock pot 
• Meat thermometer (optional)

Recipe: 

1. Clean chicken by trimming off excess, gross looking parts.
   • Good rule of thumb is to cut off excess white parts and anything that is red/bloody.
2. Place chicken breasts in the crock pot.
3. Add BBQ sauce to the crock pot.
   • Depending on your intended flavor/texture you could only add BBQ sauce without ketchup or vinegar. If so, add a little more bbq sauce to make sure it completely covers chicken. 
4. Add ketchup and white vinegar to the crock pot and mix in with the chicken.
   • BBQ sauce itself is mostly ketchup and white vinegar. Adding this additional liquid just adds more of a tangy flavor and more liquid for the chicken to cook in. 
5. Add a pinch of salt, pepper, garlic powder, and paprika to the crock pot and mix in with the chicken and sauce.
   • I try to cover the top of the crock pot in a light dusting of all the seasonings. You can judge how much/little you want to add depending on how it looks, how it smells, and how you assume it’ll taste. 
6. Put the crock pot on a high temperature for about 1 hour and 45 minutes.
   • If you want this to take more time, you can mess around with the high/low crock pot settings. 
7. Pull the chicken out of the crock pot after it has been cooking on high for 1 hour 45 minutes. The chicken should be fully cooked.
   • If you want to see if the chicken is fully cooked, get a meat thermometer and the chicken will be fully cooked when it hits 165 degrees.  
8. Shred the chicken using two forks. 
9. Add the chicken back to the crock pot to cook on low or warm for around 20 minutes. 

From the Kitchen is an ongoing series by Ella Yates in which she shares recipes and her love of cooking!