A lot of recipes call for cooked, shredded or cubed chicken. The directions for cooking this are not always with the recipe. Simmering chicken to add to casseroles, soups, and skillet meals is a basic cooking skill.
Learning this is essential to having fully-cooked, but still juicy and tender chicken in your meals. Do not overcook the chicken, or it will be dry and tough.
You can cook chicken from raw or from frozen. Cooking times will depend on the size of the chicken pieces, whether they are bone-in or boneless, and whether they start raw or frozen.
The following is for basic frozen, boneless, skinless chicken breast halves or fillets. Add more cooking time – five minutes at a time – for extra large pieces or bone-in chicken. Reduce time – five minutes at a time – for small pieces or raw chicken.
Instructions
Place chicken in a pot large enough that all pieces can float freely when water is added.
Cover chicken completely with water.
Bring to a boil over medium-high to high heat.
Cover pot, reduce heat to low/simmer.
Simmer for 20 minutes.
Remove thickest piece of chicken from the pot and cut it in half. Check that there is no pink showing in the center. If there is pink showing, place halves back into pot, bring back to a low boil, cover, reduce heat, and simmer another 5 minutes. Repeat until chicken is cooked-through, no pink in the center.
Remove all pieces of chicken to a plate. Cut into smaller chunks and allow to cool. Cutting the pieces up will allow it to cool faster.
Trim any fat or gristle away. Shred or cut into chunks/bite-sized pieces.