Pulled chicken

Two regular forks should be all you need to shred the fall-apart tender chicken meat. If you find that the meat doesn’t pull apart easily, give it another 30 minutes in the oven. Once it’s tender enough, use the forks to pull the meat off the bones and into small strips. Keep going until the whole chicken has been pulled into appetising strips. Then mix the meat with the sauce to make sure that every strip is infused with flavour.

Before serving the pulled chicken, thoroughly stir the strips to mix them with the cooking sauce and make them moist and flavourful. Any leftover chicken should be stored with as much sauce as possible in an airtight container to prevent the liquids from evaporating. When reheating your pulled chicken in the oven, cover the tray with aluminium foil to keep the liquids inside.

It’s easier to shred chicken meat when it’s still hot and fresh out of the oven. This is because the proteins and fat in the meat harden as the meat cools, making it more difficult to separate the meat fibres from each other. If you let the meat cool before shredding, the result may not look as appetising as hot-shredded pulled chicken.

Your pulled chicken should get all the moisture it needs from the surrounding cooking sauce. Before serving, make sure that the meat strips are properly mixed with the sauce. If the cooking sauce isn’t enough to keep your pulled chicken moist and flavourful, you can add some more BBQ sauce to the meat before serving – or let your guests add BBQ sauce if they like.