Monday, October 22, 2012

Slow-cooker Mexican Chicken (and the potential yumminess within)

We love Mexican food. I mean, luh-huh-huuuuuve Mexican food. So many have expressed interest in my Mexican Chicken recipe, I thought I'd go ahead and post it here. First of all, it's not mine; I got it off Pinterest, and here's the original post from Food Gawker . However, we've made some adjustments and I thought I'd share my version here.

First of all, I changed mine to Mexican Chicken, because for some reason I don't like the name "Salsa Chicken." Maybe it's because it's so much better than salsa...or maybe it's because I when I think of salsa I think of tomatoes. Bleh. Don't be hatin'. If I could like them, I would. Do you know what it's like living in the South and not liking tomatoes? I feel like a traitor. But I like grits, so that redeems me.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Chicken. First, here's the recipe:

 Mexican Chicken

3 lb bag frozen chicken breasts (not thawed)
20 oz jar salsa 
1 pkg taco seasoning (I make my own using this recipe here)

Place chicken in slow cooker (Let me say here that I use an oval 6-qt slow cooker. If yours is smaller, you may have to adjust the amount of chicken you use), sprinkle taco seasoning all over chicken, then pour salsa over chicken. Cook on low for 6 to 8 hours until it can be shredded easily with a fork.

That's IT! How easy is that? Throw three things in the crock pot then enjoy! Ah, I'm telling you, it's my
favorite thing, EVAH.

Now, here's where you can have fun with it. We've used this chicken a number of ways, and all of them are scrumdiliumptious. We've made burritos, nachos, and quesadillas with it so far. Each batch is enough for two meals (for our family of three - and I have a 12 year old boy, so adjust to your fam's eating habits. Hopefully they are not quite as bottomless-pit-ish as my son's.), so we do one thing one night, then another thing the next. Here's how we do each one.

Burritos: 
You will need flour tortillas, cooked rice, Mexican melting cheese (NOT QUESO FRESCO!!! Don't ask me how I know this. Just trust the all caps and exclamation marks.) or Pancho's white cheese dip (do other areas of the country have Pancho's dip besides around Memphis?),  and any other fixin's like extra salsa and/or sour cream. We fix regular white rice, and when it's almost done, we put some of the juice from the crock pot and let it cook in to give the rice a not-so-white flavor. Then we throw everything on a tortilla and slather it with more white cheese. MMMmmmm.


Nachos: You will need the same as burritos, minus the rice and tortillas. Oh, and add lettuce. This is the easiest thing to fix. Just throw some tortilla chips on a plate with some chicken, top with your melted cheese and other stuff (maybe not quite so much sour cream...I think this was Kiddo's plate), and enjoy.



It was the second meal after last night's quesadillas. The quesadillas were something new we hadn't tried yet, but I got the idea after craving sautèd onions and bell peppers. So, I asked Sound Man what he thought about buttering some tortillas, slapping them in a skillet, and putting chicken, the craved bell peppers and onions, and some cheese (again, the Mexican melty kind) in them. He thought it sounded righteous.

In a word - yummalicious. I mean, this picture is from my husband's phone because we couldn't be bothered with getting the camera before stuffing our faces with this awesomeness. They were heavenly.


So, do yourself and your family a favor and make this chicken. Don't just do what I did here, make up your own take on it! I'd love to hear what you come up with...'cause I'm sure I'll be stealing it from you.

Happy eating!


2 comments:

Dawn said...

oooo.... sounds yummmmy!!! i LOOOOOOVEEEE mexican food too. i could eat it everyeveryevery day. no joke.

Stefanie Brown said...

Oh, my, my, my... This looks AMAZING!!!