Random Acts of Living


Monday, April 4, 2016

What a Crock! Taco Salad & Soup

Cooking for two can sometimes be challenging. Most recipes are usually 4 servings. Leftovers can be a problem and eating it ALL is certainly a problem. That is why lately my favorite appliance has been my 1.5 qt. crockpot. (All pictures are from the web, I didn't think about blogging this till after the fact.)

Its only real setback is that it only has two settings, on and off. It's not what I would call a slow cooker because it does bring the food to a boil. I bought it years ago for little smokies in BBQ sauce and only recently have been using it for regular cooking. I thought I'd share the easy two meals I made the other day.

Easy Crockpot Chicken Fajitas

Ingredients
  • 1 lb of Chicken Breasts
  • 3 Peppers (Green, Red & Yellow), sliced
  • 1 Onion, sliced
  • 1 Package of Taco Seasoning
  • Flour or corn tortillas
  • Toppings - sour cream, cheese, guacamole, etc.
Instructions
  1. Slice peppers and onions then place them on the bottom of the crock pot
  2. Put Chicken on top of peppers and onions
  3. Sprinkle taco seasoning on the top
  4. Cook on low for 6-8 hrs (or high for 3-4)
  5. Shred everything up and mix together
  6. Serve with tortillas and all the toppings - sour cream, guacamole, cheese, lettuce, etc.

That is the actual recipe^^^ that I more or less followed. I cut up onion and bell pepper to layer the bottom of the pot and placed three small chicken breasts (frozen) on top. I have a bottle of taco seasoning...
...that I sprinkled freely over the chicken. Put the lid on, turned it on and let it cook for 4 hours. Instead of making fajitas though, we had fajita salads. They're like taco salads except with chicken fajita meat and vegetables.
I added black beans but not corn or avocado. I think I like the salad better than a wrap. One of the granddaughters was here and she didn't care for the onions or bell pepper which left me with quite a bit of taco flavored broth, bell pepper and onion. Back to the web to search for a recipe for Chicken Taco Soup. I scoured through all the recipes for common ingredients and find I only need to add the half cans of diced tomato and black beans that I already had opened for the salad, then a can of whole kernel corn and a can of kidney beans. This made for a full pot. Later I added a little more taco seasoning and taco sauce.
Quick to prepare and easy to make. Full of flavor, I really like it. The only picture that I did take was of the nearly empty pot.
These two dishes will absolutely get repeat performances. Let me know if you give them a try and what you think.

2 comments:

René Garcia said...

Ironic that you were crockpotting chicken recently! I've been trying to get back into shape and eat better, but I wasn't finding the time to prepare healthy meals. I tried crockpotting chicken breasts overnight but they would always be dry and mush the next morning. :(

Moonshadow said...

Hi René! It's been a while, good to hear from you. Not sure how you have dry and mush at the same time. LOL! I have liked the results of chicken breasts in the crock. But I don't do the overnight thing, my little crock only has one setting, HI. Everything cooks in 4 hrs. This afternoon I put a couple small steaks (frozen) in topped with a can of cream or mushroom soup, chopped onion, DASH seasoning, and a couple heaping spoonfuls of Greek yogurt. After 4 hrs the steak fell apart. I also like a butterfly pork chop topped with a couple small apples, diced, and preferred seasonings (apple pie spices). I usually just Google crock pot recipes and mix and match whatever sounds good. :)