3-Ingredient Mexican Shredded Chicken

Mid-June and the heat has arrived, not gradually but with the abruptness that Hartford reserves for its seasonal transitions — one week fifty degrees, the next week eighty-five, as if the weather got behind on its schedule and is trying to catch up. I do not complain about the heat. I am from Bayamón. I was built for this. Eduardo, who is from Ponce, which is even hotter than Bayamón, also does not complain. We are two Puerto Ricans in Connecticut who have spent thirty-three winters being cold and six months a year being warm, and the warm is the part we were designed for.

Isabella is almost one. She walks now — not the tentative walking of a new walker but the determined walking of a Delgado, which is to say she walks with purpose, with direction, with the understanding that the destination is the kitchen and the kitchen is where the food is. She walks to my refrigerator and points at it. She cannot reach the handle. She points and says, Na-na, which Jenny says means banana and which I choose to interpret as the beginning of a complex sentence about the superiority of Puerto Rican bananas over all other bananas.

I have been teaching Jenny to make sofrito. This is significant. This is — I do not use this word lightly — historic. I have never taught a non-Puerto Rican to make sofrito. The sofrito recipe has been passed from Abuela Consuelo to Mami to me to David, an unbroken chain of island hands. Jenny's hands are from Glastonbury. Jenny's hands have never held recao. Jenny's hands learned to cook from a cookbook, not a grandmother. But Jenny's hands feed my grandchildren, and my grandchildren will eat sofrito, and the sofrito must be correct, and the only way to ensure the sofrito is correct is to teach Jenny myself, standing beside her at her counter in West Hartford, guiding the knife through the culantro, adjusting the garlic, saying: now smell it. Now taste it. More. More. Yes. That's right. The sofrito knows when it's right. Trust the sofrito.

Jenny's first batch was — I will be honest — adequate. Not good. Not bad. Adequate. I said, Jenny, adequate is the starting point. Good comes with practice. Excellent comes with time. She said, How long did it take you to get to excellent? I said, Forty years. She looked at me. I said, But you're starting with my recipe, so it will be faster. She smiled. I smiled. The chain extended, one link longer, one set of gringa hands added to the transmission, and the adding was an expansion, not a dilution, and the expansion was love.

After Jenny’s first batch of sofrito reached what I’d call adequate — which, as I told her, is the only honest place to start — I did not want that jar sitting in her refrigerator without a purpose. Sofrito that has no immediate destination loses its momentum, and Jenny needed momentum. So I left her with this: three ingredients, one pot, and instructions to trust the base she had just learned to make. If the sofrito is right, this chicken is right. That is the whole lesson, carried forward.

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 30 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 cup salsa or sofrito (homemade strongly preferred)
1 oz packet taco seasoning (about 2 tablespoons)

Instructions

Season the chicken. Pat chicken breasts dry with paper towels and rub taco seasoning evenly over all sides.
Build the base. Pour salsa or sofrito into a wide, lidded skillet or medium saucepan and spread to cover the bottom. Nestle the seasoned chicken breasts into the sauce in a single layer.
Simmer covered. Bring to a gentle simmer over medium heat, then reduce to medium-low. Cover and cook for 20 to 25 minutes, turning chicken once halfway through, until the internal temperature reaches 165°F.
Shred and return. Transfer chicken to a cutting board and shred using two forks. Return shredded meat to the skillet and stir to coat thoroughly in the cooking liquid. Simmer uncovered for 3 to 5 additional minutes to let the chicken absorb the sauce.
Serve. Use as a filling for tacos, rice bowls, or sandwiches, or serve alongside white rice and tostones. The cooking liquid doubles as a sauce — do not discard it.

Nutrition (per serving)

3-Ingredient Mexican Shredded Chicken — The First Dish Jenny Made with Her Sofrito