Shredded Chicken Base
Two chickens, four seasonings, and a slow cooker. Shred it, dry it, and it feeds a week of trail dinners.
- calories
- 320
- weight
- 2.2 oz
- cal / oz
- 145
- protein
- 42 g
- serves
- 8, scales
- prep
- 15 min
- cook
- 10 min
- total time
- 25 min
- water
- 300 ml boiled
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Canister stove
- Alcohol / Esbit
- Backpacking
- Thru-hike
- Basecamp
- Bikepacking
- Gluten free
- Dairy free
- Nut free
- One pot
- Dehydrate ahead
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Whole chickens | 2 | pull the giblets, save them for stock |
|---|---|---|
| Salt | 2 tsp | |
| Black pepper | 1 tsp | |
| Italian seasoning | 1 tbsp | |
| Ground coriander | 1 tsp |
Method
- At home: rinse the birds, pat them dry, and set them breast up in the slow cooker. Two fit in a 6-quart if you wedge them.
- Scatter the salt, pepper, Italian seasoning, and coriander over the top. Lid on, low, 6 to 8 hours.
- Pull the meat off the bone and shred it with two forks. Skip the skin and pull off visible fat, both of which go rancid in storage.
- Spread the shredded meat thin on dehydrator trays and run at 145F for 6 to 8 hours, until every strand snaps instead of bending. Blot any beads of fat that surface.
- Portion into bags at about 2 oz each. Keep the strained cooking liquid, chill it, lift off the fat cap, and dehydrate the jelly underneath into a broth powder.
- In camp: cover a portion with 300 ml of boiling water, lid the pot, and leave it ten minutes off the heat. Add the broth powder and whatever starch you brought.
This starts as a slow-cooker meal-prep chicken and ends as trail protein. The slow cooker is doing the tenderizing, which matters more than it looks: meat pulled apart into loose strands rehydrates in minutes, where a diced cube stays leathery in the middle no matter how long you wait.
Fat is the whole problem with carrying meat. It does not dry, and it turns on you within days at pack temperature. So the skin comes off, the fat gets blotted, and the cooking liquid gets chilled so you can lift the cap before dehydrating what is left. What you carry is nearly pure protein — about 42 grams a portion at two ounces, which no other trail food matches by weight. Bring your own calories in the form of oil and starch.
Packing
Portion bags with an oxygen absorber. It keeps for months at home in the freezer and about a week in your pack in warm weather. Broth powder rides in a separate small bag; it clumps.
Variations
- Season the birds with taco or Greek blend instead, if you already know what the dinners will be.
- Rehydrate straight into a pot of instant rice or couscous. The meat takes about as long as the grain.
- In a cold-soak jar, give it 45 minutes rather than ten. It comes back chewier.
https://dontwastethecrumbs.com/slow-cooker-chicken