Three ingredients and water. The sofrito is doing all of the work, which is the only reason a recipe this short is worth writing down.
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 packs chicken tenderloins (Kirkland — the ones that come six sealed packs to a box), about 2 lb
- 1/2 jar sofrito (Loisa Classic), 165 g
- 6 oz water
- Salt, call it 5 g — I did not measure it, I just salted it
Method
- Chicken tenderloins into the Instant Pot.
- Half the jar of sofrito over the top, the salt, 6 oz of water. Stir it enough that the sofrito is not sitting in one place.
- Lid on and sealed. Press Poultry and let it run. I do not set a time, I use the preset.
- Natural release. Leave the valve alone and let the pressure come down on its own — that is another 10 to 15 minutes of it sitting there cooking, which is part of why the chicken shreds.
- Open it and pull the chicken apart with two forks right in the pot. It goes back into the liquid and takes the color.
The Poultry preset is not the same length on every Instant Pot, so if yours is a different model, check what the button is actually set to before you trust my timing. The Kirkland package says to cook chicken to 165°F. That is their number, not mine, and it is on the front of every pack.
Notes
I salted this by eye, so the 5 g is an estimate and not a measurement. The sofrito comes with its own salt, so the amount on top is doing less than it looks like. I will weigh it the next time I make this and correct the number here.
The numbers up top come off the two labels, not off a calculator I trusted with guesses. 32 oz of raw tenderloins is eight of Kirkland’s 4 oz servings: 880 calories, 208 g of protein. Half a jar of Loisa is five of its 2 tbsp servings: 100 calories, no protein. The salt and the water are nothing. That is 980 calories and 208 g of protein sitting in the pot, and I eat it over four days.
Weigh the chicken raw, before it goes in. That is what the 8 oz means here. It cooks down by roughly a quarter, so the portion on the plate looks smaller than the number sounds — that is water leaving, not protein.
The soft number is sodium, and it is not small. The sofrito brings about 950 mg on its own and the salt I threw in on top is a guess, so I am not going to print a total I cannot stand behind. If you watch sodium, this is the ingredient to watch, not the chicken.