Easily Shred Rotisserie Chicken With Just One Kitchen Tool

Whether you've leveled up your homemade rotisserie chicken game or simply bought your favorite brand, you know how delicious and versatile the golden-brown birds are. But shredding a rotisserie chicken with your fingers or a fork can be a tedious, juicy mess. Instead, use a kitchen appliance you may not have thought of for this purpose: your stand mixer or hand mixer. You'll still need your fingers for part of the process, but the results will be so much easier.

Start with a warm or room-temperature rotisserie chicken and remove all the bones and skin — try deboning your chicken with this plastic bag hack to keep your fingers clean. Separate any tendons and joints from the good stuff. You can either toss the bones and junky parts or, better yet, turn your leftovers into an easy homemade stock. You can also snack on the skin while you work or save it for later.

Place the cleaned chicken pieces in a large bowl. Add your specific seasoning mix to the bowl now, if you wish, or wait until you're ready to use the shredded chicken for something specific. Now, get your mixer ready! Whether you use a stand mixer with a flat beater attachment or a hand mixer, make sure to set it to low speed — otherwise, you may end up redecorating your kitchen with chicken. Now shred the pieces into your desired consistency. This mixing process should take between 30 seconds and a minute.

If chicken salad is on the menu, make sure to try the secret herbaceous ingredient Ina Garten adds to her chicken salad. (Spoiler alert: It's tarragon.) But shredded chicken has so many other good uses. When making a hearty breakfast for a special weekend brunch, get some potatoes, eggs, and spices to make shredded chicken hash. Another breakfast meal idea is to warm up the chicken with canned beans and serve it with fried eggs and toast. 

Making a filling salad for lunch or dinner? Combine cold shredded chicken, blue cheese crumbles, and fresh veggies such as celery, sugar snap peas, carrots, and romaine lettuce. Swap out the lettuce for cold short pasta, such as penne or farfalle (bowties), and you have the perfect potluck offering.

Alternatively, warm up seasoned shredded chicken and toss it with your favorite spices or sauces for tacos, fajitas, hot sandwiches and wraps, and even pizza. And, of course, your chicken can be the star of hot chili or soup, especially a simple chicken noodle that you make in a pinch. Still have the chicken skin you removed before shredding for stock or a snack? You can save it in a plastic bag in the fridge for later to make a crispy chicken skin, lettuce, and tomato sandwich.

Using a stand mixer to shred rotisserie chicken is easy, and you can try it with other meats, too — like when cooking pork shoulder or pork butt, beef, or lamb for sandwiches, tacos, and nachos. But shredding meat is only one of many secret uses you can get out of your stand- (or hand) mixer.

If you're making scrambled eggs or omelets for a large group, then a mixer will save your hand from cramps and yield airy, fluffy eggs. Use a stand mixer with a whisk attachment, set the speed to medium-low, and whip your eggs with salt and pepper for a couple of minutes. Then cook the egg mixture as per your favorite recipe. 

You can also enjoy the freshness of homemade ice cream by learning how to make ice cream using only a stand mixer or a hand mixer should be on the docket. Some stand mixer brands sell an ice cream maker attachment to make the process easier, but with some effort, you can have success without it. You'll just need to take the ice cream base out of the freezer and then mix it to break up the ice crystals every 30 minutes for about three hours.