Pinteresting Summer

Challenge 27- Crockpot Chicken Enchiladas

So this was pinned off of a friend of mine and it looked delicious. However when I clicked on the image the recipe was actually for a baked chicken enchilada recipe with no mention of the crockpot what so ever (I have again been deceived by a Pinterest description, will I never learn). I decided that I could take the recipe and make it crockpot friendly (or at least try). This is the original recipe (from http://www.genaw.com/lowcarb/mexican_chicken.html)

MEXICAN CHICKEN
1 pound boneless chicken breasts
1 teaspoon Seasoning for Tacos
Salt, to taste
1/2 cup enchilada sauce
4 ounces cheddar cheese, shredded
3 green onions, chopped
Sprinkle the chicken on both sides with taco seasoning; grill or sauté. Cut the chicken into cubes and place in a greased 8x8" baking dish; season with salt to taste. Add the enchilada sauce and toss to coat the chicken. Sprinkle the cheese over the chicken and bake at 350º for 10-20 minutes, until hot and bubbly. Scatter the green onions over the top.

I had everything except the green onions, which I figured were good but not essential to the recipe (my husband however disagreed).

In my version I put a crockpot liner in the crock pot (I learned my lesson from the glazed pecan mess I had to clean up last week) and added in about 1/2 cup of chicken stock and then 4 frozen chicken breasts (they were small). I sprinkled about half a pouch of taco seasoning on the chicken, about 1/2 cup of chopped red onion, then added the can of mild enchilada sauce. I cooked this in the crockpot on high for 3 hours.



After 3 hours the chicken was cooked but not so cooked that it was falling apart. I preheated the oven to 350 and placed (very carefully, the chicken was still pretty tender) the four breasts in a 8x8 casserole dish.

I spooned on about half of the sauce mix from the pot on top of the chicken and added 1 cup of shredded Fiesta blend cheese (you could add more or less depending on your love of cheese). I put foil over the top of the casserole dish (very important step) and into the oven for 20 minutes. I made a bag of boil a bag white rice to go with the chicken instead of using tortillas. After 20 minutes in the oven it came out looking like this:

These cheese melted well and really tasted great with the sauce. The chicken was still tender but was still able to be cut into instead of shredding apart like most crockpot chicken.

This recipe was really good and transitioned well into a crockpot (ok not completely crockpot) recipe. I probably could have melted the cheese in the crockpot but sometimes that is hit or miss with the flavor so I decided to use the oven. The sauce was tasty and the chicken moist but it wasn't anything remarkable. I might try this one again and cook the chicken longer in the crockpot so I can shred it and make this with shredded chicken instead. The recipe has a lot of potential and can be spiced up and added to fairly easily. The husband was a bit remiss that I didn't have green onions and next time I'll be sure to make this when I have them at my disposal. Calorie wise this is fairly low calorie and could go with black or pinto beans if you wanted to go higher protein lower carb version. All in all a great dinner recipe that takes only a few ingredients and not a whole lot of effort.