The Nourishing Gourmet

Nourishing. Satisfying. Gourmet.

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Instant Pot Mexican Shredded Chicken

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This easy recipe takes just a couple of ingredients and can be thrown together in mere minutes, but produces flavorful shredded chicken that’s perfect for tacos, burritos and burrito bowls, and taco salads.

If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you may have noticed that we tend to love dark meats, such as chicken thighs. But chicken breast can be delicious too! This recipe is suitable for most gluten-free, grain-free, paleo/primal diets. I most often eat this on the THM (Trim Healthy Mama) plan as part of my E meal.

For those of us coming to THM from the traditional foods world, eating some meals that are higher in the slow carbs, but lower in fat is a real transition. However, look at how satisfying this meal is below!

What’s in this bowl: Brown rice, pinto beans, Mexican shredded chicken, cabbage slaw tossed with a teaspoon of oil and lime juice, fresh garlic and salt, salsa, and nonfat Greek yogurt.

If you are interested in why I decided to start combining what I had learned from other experts in the holistic world with THM, you can read my story here and learn about my coaching as well.

For an S meal, or other Mexican-inspired recipes, check out this juicy Carnitas recipe as well as my Simple Mexican Coleslaw. Delicious!

But regardless of your dietary lifestyle, this recipe is delicious!

Instant Pot Shredded Chicken

  • 2-3 Chicken Breasts
  • 1 and 1/4 cup salsa or Picante sauce
  • 1 teaspoon each chili, cumin, garlic powder
  1. In a 6 quart Instant Pot add the salsa or sauce. An IP needs at least 1 cup of liquid, so if your salsa is dry, add chicken broth. Add the chicken and spices.
  2. Secure lid, set steam release valve to closed, and program for ten minutes on high on manual.
  3. Let rest for five minutes, and then release. Check to make sure chicken is cooked all the way through.
  4. Shred chicken, then pour the sauce over it. Enjoy!

Why I’m Spatchcocking My Turkey This Year

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This method has many advantages, including a super fast cooking time, and moist, delicious meat.

Turkey is the centerpiece of most Thanksgiving tables, yet it’s also the hardest to cook correctly. If you undercook it, food poisoning is a possibility, but if you overcook it, the breasts can be dry and unappetizing. 

My solution for the past five years or so has been trying out different forms of brining. My go to is this dry brine – I love not having to deal with a lot of liquid (as well as not having to find a large enough container for said turkey and brine). A dry brine still gives you the flavorful benefits of a brine as well as a juicy turkey. 

However, I think spatchcocking makes my recipe even better. Spatchcocking is when you remove the spine of the turkey, and roast the turkey flat. This has significant benefits, the biggest that it cooks very fast. I cooked a 16 pound turkey in a little less than an hour and a half. Wow! But it also gets the turkey’s skin delicious, crisp and brown, and even better –roasts the turkey evenly – so the legs and breasts get done at the same time. 

While you won’t be able to stuff your turkey this way (an option that many experts say not to do anyway), the benefits far outweigh that fact. 

But before I send you all scurrying to try this out yourself, I do want to honestly share our experience testing this method out. 

  1. It’s not at all hard to spatchcock a chicken with a sharp knife or kitchen shears. I had a harder time with a turkey. My husband, with his stronger hands, ended up helping me out with this part. I prefer kitchen shears, but do expect to have to use some oomph on this part. 
  2. When I pressed down on the turkey to flatten it after the backbone was removed, a large squirt of turkey juice sprayed across the kitchen floor. Oops. 
  3. Most recipes I found used a very hot oven for this method. This ended up causing a lot of smoking. For Thanksgiving, I plan on turning the oven down a bit after the first 20 minutes, and also adding water to the bottom of the pan to hopefully prevent that from reoccurring. 
  4. Our turkey was hefty at 16 pounds, so it just barely fit on our sheet pan once flattened. I would say it needs to be 16 pounds or less, so this method won’t likely work for larger birds unless you split the turkey in half and roast on two pans. 

Despite those disadvantages, our “test” turkey turned out so well cooked and delicious we all decided this was a method we simply had to do again. Paired with the salt brine? Amazing. 

I don’t want to give my own directions yet, as I still want to experiment with this method, but here are a couple of recipes showing how to spatchcock: Example one, two, and three.

And here is my dry brine recipe! 

Roasted Frozen Broccoli

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This is not only a simple recipe, but it's delicious and kid-friendly too. Yes! Even frozen vegetables can taste good!

We have a problem. If we don’t like how I prepare vegetables, they are pushed around on our plates and barely touched. This is no good, as I believe that vegetables are not only important for our health, but they can also be a delicious part of our daily diet as well. 

So when we made our big move to South Dakota, I faced a new problem. Back in Portland, Oregon, I had a large array of options for vegetables. Here? Not so much. Don’t get me wrong, there are still plenty of stores and some good options, but I found that I was eating less vegetables, they were costing a little more, and I wasn’t getting as good of a variety into our diets. Because of the climate here, we simply don’t have as many local options for produce. 

I needed to change my game plan, and that meant being willing to try more frozen vegetables. I have, admittedly, long eschewed frozen vegetables, and we mainly used them as a stop-gap. But I realized that there were many great frozen vegetables options here and I needed to figure out how to make them a little more delicious. I’m proud to say that we now eat them on a regular basis and all of us love them. Why? 

Can You Roast Frozen Vegetables?

Well, it turns out that you can roast them just like you do fresh vegetables! Why does roasting make fresh and frozen vegetables so much better? For a number of reasons: It helps crisp vegetables while they cook and if you leave them in long enough they will start to caramelize and give you a savory depth of flavor. 

Steamed frozen vegetables can sometimes have a mushy texture once cooked, or be very bland in flavor. I did find that the recipe I used for my cooking like a Roman day, using a spiced wine sauce with frozen broccoli, was really delightful. So you can absolutely have good steamed frozen vegetables. 

However, roasting them is a more fail-safe way for delicious vegetables that takes very little hands-on time. 

It’s also very versatile. We’ve done frozen Brussels sprouts, a carrots, broccoli and cauliflower mix, and both cauliflower and broccoli. The only thing we haven’t really been fans of is the frozen carrots. They were far better when roasted than steamed, but we found we preferred the other vegetables. 

Basic Method for Roasting Frozen Vegetables

Basic Method: Roasting vegetables is very easy. The basis concept is to toss frozen vegetables (don’t defrost) with oil, salt and pepper and roast in a hot oven until they are browned and crispy. I often don’t even set a timer. 

Additions: You can also toss them with dried herbs, fresh garlic before they go in the oven, or toss with a splash of balsamic vinegar and fresh herbs right after they come out of the oven. Or, roast with chopped bacon. This is the type of recipe where knowing the basic method is helpful, and then you can have fun trying a variety of vegetables and herbs and spices. 

But to get you started, here is a basic recipe for Roasted Frozen Broccoli

Roasted Frozen Broccoli

1 package of frozen broccoli (16 oz) 

2-3 tablespoons of oil or melted fat of your choice 

Salt and pepper 

  1. Preheat oven to 425F. I use parchment paper because I use sheet pans that are aluminum, but you can an unlined sheet pan as well. 
  2. Toss broccoli with oil/fat and salt and pepper. Place in oven and cook until browned to desired doneness. (between 15-35 minutes). 

Variation: My favorite variation is adding some sliced fresh onions to the broccoli before it cooks and then tossing with chopped fresh basil and a splash of balsamic vinegar once it’s out of the oven. Fabulous! 

Pomegranate Italian Cream Soda (Dairy Free)

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This healthy but sophisticated drink is delicious as well as beautiful. Antioxidant rich and only three ingredients! -- The Nourishing Gourmet

This sophisticated Italian Soda is sweetened and flavored with rich pomegranate juice for a refreshing and antioxidant-rich drink. You only need two ingredients (or three for the cream version), with no sugar syrup needed. It’s a lovely and beautiful drink! I especially like it with a drizzle of coconut milk (my husband uses cream or half and half).

Pomegranate works particularly well for this type of drink because it has such a pronounced flavor. Other juices could easily become watered down too much, and so you would have to use a juice concentrate instead. The other possible method is the one I used for this Paleo Raspberry Cream Soda where I started with whole raspberries.

Make sure you buy 100% pomegranate juice, otherwise the flavor won’t be pronounced enough. I used Pom Juice, but you can also use something like this brand.

Another juice I’m eager to try as an Italian Soda is tart cherry juice. It’s also especially antioxidant-rich and with a robust flavor.

If you wanted to try a juice concentrate, you can find anything from blueberry concentrate, black cherry juice concentrate, and even elderberry concentrate. For juice concentrates you will only need a small portion per cup.

This is the Coconut Milk I like to use. It is guar gum free, and it is easy to stir into a drink.

This drink is paired nicely with quinoa pizzas, pasta dishes, and salads.

This healthy but sophisticated drink is delicious as well as beautiful. Antioxidant rich and only three ingredients! -- The Nourishing Gourmet

Pomegranate Italian Cream Soda (Dairy Free)

I eyeball the proportions. Fill the glass 3/4s full of sparkling water, and then finish it with the juice.

Per Serving:

  • Ice
  • ¾ cup of sparkling water
  • ¼ cup of pomegranate juice
  • 1-2 teaspoons Aroy-D Coconut Milk (or, if consuming dairy, cream or half and half)

Directions:

Fill a cup with ice, and add sparkling water. Add juice, and stir in the coconut milk. Enjoy.

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