Slow Cooker Salsa Chicken!

Good afternoon friends! How is everyone's February going? We just had about 4 days of rain, storms, and cold weather- then today it's sunny, beautiful, and about 70 degrees. Gotta love Florida weather. I'm just so grateful for the sunshine today! The constant rain was making me so lazy! It's just hard to feel productive when the view outside is so dreary. Slow cooker meals are my fave for a rainy day, because they do all the work for you! So you can grab your snuggie and your puppy (or kitty) and catch up on your DVR. Or you know do something productive if you're more motivated than I. 

I saw a recipe on Pinterest a couple of weeks ago for a crockpot salsa chicken, and it sounded so yummy! The only issue I had with it was that it included cream of chicken soup and some other kinda sketch ingredients. So I said to myself, let's clean this up a bit and make a meal out of it. Turns out Chicken + Organic salsa + Rotel + slow cooker= DELICIOUSNESS. You don't need anything else. If you want to make it even CLEANER, in place of the salsa and rotel just chop some tomatoes, peppers, and onions. That's essentially what's in there anyways. Make sure to add some seasoning too, of course. 

Ingredients:
About 2-3 Chicken Breasts
1 Jar Your Fave Salsa
1 Can Rotel (Tomatoes & Chiles)
1 Tbsp. Taco Seasoning (mine is here)

Step 1: Place your chicken in the crock of your slow cooker in an even layer.

Step 2: Pour the salsa and rotel over the chicken and top with the taco seasoning.

Step 3: Cook on low for 6-8 hours or high for 3-4 hours.

Step 4: Pull your chicken breasts out and shred with 2 forks, OR if you have a stand mixer toss your chicken in the bowl and use the paddle attachment on 1 or 2 for 30 seconds to get the perfect shred with zero work. (TOLD YOU I WAS LAZY!)

Perfectly shredded chicken, every time!

Step 5: Put your shredded chicken back into the salsa sauce and stir to coat completely. Put slow cooker on "warm" and let the chicken soak up the sauce while you set up your taco bar. Or salad bar. Or however you wanna eat this chicken...

Our Taco Bar! Avocado, shredded cheese, sour cream, & Lettuce

ENJOY! We used low-carb tortillas to make to make tacos, but this chicken is great over a salad or wrapped up in lettuce for a carb-less taco! Yum!

 

Slow Cooker Mongolian Beef & Broccoli!

I've got a good one for y'all today! This is probably my hubby's FAVORITE dinner. Which makes me super happy, because it is sooo easy! The crockpot does all the work for you, you just chop the steak & veggies. It's like takeout Chinese that's waiting for you when you get home. Minus the MSG. And way cheaper. Skirt steak/flank steak is SO CHEAP! I bought the particular one in this post at the commissary for $3.50. The ENTIRE meal ran me less than $5. 2 servings. <$2.50 a piece. Can you beat that at the local Chinese food joint? I DON'T THINK SO. 

Pretty right?! Okay I'm done talking- you need this recipe. Now.

Ingredients:
1 lb. Skirt steak or Flank steak
1/4 Cup Corn Starch
1 Tbsp. Minced Garlic
1/2 Cup Low Sodium Soy Sauce
1/2 Cup Water
1/2 Cup Hoisin Sauce (find in the Asian food aisle, next to Soy Sauce)
1/2 Cup Brown Sugar
1 1/2 Cups Chopped Fresh or Frozen Broccoli

Step 1: Cut your steak into strips.

Step 2: Place your steak strips into a gallon sized ziploc bag. Pour corn starch over the steak and toss to coat. Let rest, & make the sauce while the steak is resting.

Not the clearest picture, but that's the steak in the bag coated in corn starch. Promise.

Step 3: In a medium sized bowl whisk together garlic, soy sauce, water, hoisin sauce, & brown sugar.

Step 4: Place your steak strips in the crock of your slow cooker, pour sauce over top.

Place top on slow cooker & cook on low for 6-8 hours or high 3-4 hours. When you're about 20 minutes away from eating toss in some broccoli. Stir to combine everything, replace top and let cook an additional 20-30 minutes on low. EAT.

Enjoy :-)

Slow Cooker Applesauce!

Guess who's back? Back again? Brittany's back, tell a friend. Okay, sorry I'm no Eminem- but the point is I'm back to blogging! The past couple of weeks have been totally cray cray for me because I was moving my little caravan from Florida to Arkansas to wait for my hubby to come home from his 6 1/2 month deployment to the Middle East. Pretty much all of last week I was just running errands and setting things up for him to have some-what of a stable "home" to come back to. I say "home" in quotations, because we are currently residing in our very generous friends house while we are in limbo until we move to our new base next month. I told you- cray cray! But it's all good now, because my husband arrived back in my arms last Saturday morning! Wahoo! So all is right in my world, I have been cooking up a storm- but most of the meals I've made him thus far are already on the blog! Back to me thinking up new ideas, at least I have a very good recipe tester now! :) Okay, I lured you here with promises of applesauce...

Have you ever made homemade applesauce before? If you answered no, that is a real shame! It is CRAZY easy and the end result is a much healthier applesauce than what you get in those little jars at the grocery store! Bonus, it is apple season and you can get all kinds of apples for super cheap right now. Depending on what kind of apples you get, it will change the taste of your sauce. Like if you were to use some sour-ish granny smith apples, you'd have a more tart applesauce. Use super-sweet Gala & Courtland apples, like I did here, and you'll get a more traditional sweet applesauce! Apples are naturally sweet, so you don't need to add much sweetener, if any. I chose to add a couple of teaspoons of agave nectar. You could sub the agave for honey or for a bit of brown sugar- or you can skip the sweetener all together and have just an unsweetened applesauce. Bottle some of your fresh sauce up and give it to neighbors as gifts! There is nothing better than some fresh homemade goodies, especially when they're secretly healthy ones ;) The kiddos are always applesauce fans (at least all the ones I know...) and this is a recipe you can feed them and feel really good about! Plus... it makes your house smell heavenly while it's cooking! That perfect fall, cinnamon-y fragrance! YUM!

Ingredients:

6 apples of your choosing (I used 3 Courtland, 3 Gala) peeled and cut into wedges
1 Cinnamon Stick (you can buy just 1 in the bulk section @ Whole Foods;))
3 teaspoons Agave Nectar (or honey, or brown sugar)

Step 1: Peel & cut up your apples. Dump them into the slow cooker. Top with agave and toss in the cinnamon stick. Cover and cook on low for 6 hours. Stir every couple of hours.

Step 2: Fish out your cinnamon stick. If you like chunky applesauce- you're done! For a smoother texture mash with an old fashioned potato masher, or use one of those fancy schmancy immersion blenders if you have one! If you have super picky kids who need their applesauce SMOOTH, toss it into a food processor or blender and give it a whirl. 

THAT'S IT. Told you, easiest recipe ever! Keep in an air-tight container in the refrigerator :) ENJOY!

And a little pic of me & the hubbs the day he came home... :)

Hearty Slow Cooker Chicken Soup!

So today is officially day 11 of my Whole:30 challenge. I'm feelin good y'all! I'm just a tad bit bored with food at this point. Me, bored with food? Say what? I know, weird. It's just that I feel like I'm eating the same foods over & over again. I needed a game-changer. This soup hit the spot! I am once again excited to eat :)! 

I have been wanting to make some homemade chicken stock for awhile now, and since it's Whole:30 approved and the weather here has ALMOST warranted soup (low 70's, it's Florida- I'll take it) I figured it was the time. I am so glad I decided to make the broth homemade, it's EASY. For real. The most tedious part of this recipe was chopping the vegetables. I am going to REALLY encourage you to make your own stock (because, like I just said it's EASY, tastes way better than store-bought & is healthier!) but if you just don't want to - you could sub around 4 cups of chicken stock. I also roasted my own chicken because I wanted to show y'all the whole process beginning to end, but you could totally buy a rotisserie chicken and skip that step. Easy peezy.

SIDE NOTE: You've gotta let the stock cook for a good long while in the crock pot, so make this the day BEFORE you want the soup :)

& by the way, if you brought this to a sick person- they will ADORE you. It's absolutely perfect for a sick day. And way, way healthy. I imagine it would freeze beautifully as well.

Ingredients:
1 Roasted Chicken
2 Garlic cloves, minced
1 Tablespoon onion powder
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon kosher salt
freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 Carrots, chopped
2 Celery stalks, chopped 
1-2 Bell peppers, chopped
A few handfuls of Kale
2 eggs

Step 1: Roast your chicken. Or buy a rotisserie chicken. I stuffed my chicken with lemon slices and garlic cloves, covered it in olive oil, & seasoned with salt & pepper- then bake for 1 1/2 hours @ 400 degrees.

Pretty Chicken!

Step 2: Separate the meat from the chicken that you want to use in the soup later & save in an air-tight container in the fridge, throw everything else (minus the lemon slices) into the crock pot. This includes bones, skin (or you can totally eat that, I won't judge you), fat, & any sketchy pieces of meat you don't want in your soup.

My meat is the bowl to the left, everything else in the crock pot on the right

Step 3: Fill the crock with enough cold water to cover everything completely. Add garlic cloves, onion powder, cumin, oregano, salt, pepper, & red pepper flakes, stir to combine.  Cover and cook on low heat for at least 12 hours. I started mine after dinner last night, and let it sit all night long.

Step 3: Transfer the contents of the crock to a bowl. Place a colander in the crock to strain out all of the bones, skin, fat, etc. that we DON'T want in our stock.

Step 4: Pour the stock over the colander into the crock. You'll be left with a pretty broth like this:

Step 5: I didn't take a picture of this (whoopsie), but it's easy. Pour the broth back into the bowl you just used, put the colander back in the crock and line with a cheese cloth. Pour the broth over the cheese cloth to strain the fat out. Then you'll have this:

Step 6: Add your carrots, celery, pepper, chicken (the leftover meat from the roasted chicken), and kale to the broth and give a big stir. Cover and let cook on low for an hour or so, until you're about ready to eat.

The kale will cook down, it takes a bit though- it is a very hearty green

Step 7:  Put your 2 eggs in a bowl & whisk them together.

Step 8: We're going to add the eggs to the soup to thicken the broth a bit, but you will need to temper them first. Basically, you need to get the eggs to the temperature of the soup so they don't cook and become scrambled eggs when they hit the broth. To do this simply ladle some of the broth into the egg mixture and whisk together. Add a couple more ladle-fulls to the eggs until they are about the same temperature as the soup.

Step 9: Pour the egg mixture into the soup and give a big stir.

Step 10: Cover and cook on low for another 20-30 minutes. EAT.

ENJOY! :)

 

Slow Cooker BBQ Chicken!

So I told y'all the other day how much I adore crock-pot meals. I mean, pouring your ingredients in a slow cooker & letting it simmer all day to come home to a great home cooked meal that needed no supervision? Perfection. Last night was the very first NFL regular season game (Giants vs. Cowboys- I detest them BOTH but I had a player from my fantasy team playing so I was all ears) and I knew some BBQ was in order. I had a bunch of errands to run all day, so I just threw everything in the slow cooker, came home & shredded the chicken, poured a glass of wine, & by kick-off our dinner was ready to go! 

I had the pleasure of serving my baby brother & 2 of his friends who gobbled these up right away. This recipe is ALWAYS a crowd pleaser and super great for game day. They made sandwiches out of their chicken, but if you're like me & you're not eating bread just skip the bun and eat it by itself- still tastes fantastic. I did have an issue finding BBQ sauce at the grocery store that didn't contain any high fructose corn syrup (you don't want that stuff- it's nasty!) but finally found a brand "Stubb's" I believe that was all good ingredients and tasted pretty fantastic!

Ingredients: (Serves about 6)
1 (12 oz.) bottle of BBQ sauce of your choice
1 packet of dry Italian dressing mix
1 C. water
1/4 C. corn starch
2 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts

Step 1: Pour BBQ sauce, dressing mix, water, corn starch, and Worcestershire sauce into crock and whisk together until combined.

Step 2: Add chicken breasts to crock. Make sure there is enough liquid to cover chicken, you may need to add more water if there isn't enough liquid.

Step 3: Cover and cook on high for 3-3 1/2 hours or low for 6-7 hours.

Step 4: Pull chicken breasts out and shred with 2 forks and return to the crock when shredded, turn heat to low (if you had it on high heat) and cook another 30 minutes.

ENJOY!