Slow Cooker Mexican Chicken

I found this recipe while perusing Pintrest one day. I was very doubtful of its flavor, as it only has 3 ingredients, but since I had all the ingredients on hand, I decided to try it. Honestly, I will never make chicken for tacos another way! I didn't realize that I hadn't put it on this blog (had actually posted it on my Domestication blog) so here it is for your enjoyment.

Ingredients

• 6 boneless skinless chicken breasts
• 1 (16 oz) jar salsa
• 1 package taco seasoning OR 3-4 tablespoons homemade taco seasoning

Directions

Everybody into the pool!

•  Dump chicken, salsa, and taco seasoning into your slow cooker. Stir a bit so the taco seasoning and salsa blend together.
• Cook on low for 5 hours. Shred chicken and stir until well mixed.
• Cook on Low for one more hour.

Shredded chicken

My Take

That's it! It's that simple. You can even let it cook a bit longer (6-8 hours) before shredding it, but I highly recommend letting it cook after you shred it for a bit. That way, the shredded chicken will soak up all that flavor. I love to eat these on flour tortillas with tomatoes, shredded lettuce, sour cream, and black olives. I've also used the leftovers to make a taco casserole, which turned out wonderful.

Usually when I make this, I only use 2-3 breasts, as I'm the only one in the house that eats it. I could make more and freeze it, but we don't have a lot of freezer space. So, when I make it, I cut everything in half. And, honestly, I just eyeball how much salsa and taco seasoning to use.

Facebook

I've been thinking about this for awhile, and finally decided to create a page for "Café Strawn" over on Facebook. I felt that this would be good for me to post what I've been doing in the kitchen in between recipe posts over here.

There are a lot of recipes that I've been working on, but I haven't made a lot of them up to my standard yet, so I haven't posted them. I also have made some stuff, but forgot to take pictures (my bad...) Because I know you eat with your eyes first, pictures are very important to recipes. Sadly, many of my first recipes have lack-luster pictures because my equipment wasn't that great. I've upgraded, so when I remake some of those things again, then I'll retake pictures and edit the original post.

In other news, I've created a Pinterest board of all the recipes (that have decent pictures) that I've posted. I feel like this is a good way for me to garner some more traffic. If you are a user of Pinterest and have tried or would like to try one of my recipes, I would highly appreciate it if you could Pin or re-Pin one of my recipes. Thank you!

I think that's all the news for me today. Friday I will be making some homemade lasagna, so be looking for a post about that next week. :)

Beef and Noodles

Pot roast is a wonderful meal for a nice quiet family dinner, but what do you do with the leftovers? My mom use to make this wonderful recipe of beef and noodles using the leftovers from our pot roast dinner. I loved it so much, that I have taken the liberty of making it and writing up a recipe for it.

Beef and Noodles
(Printable Version)

Ingredients

• 1 cup leftover pot roast, diced or shredded
• 1/2 package extra wide egg noodles
• 1 cup gravy
• 1/2 cup cooked carrots, sliced (optional)

Directions

• Cook egg noodles according to package. Drain.
• Add roast, carrots, and gravy. Mix well. Cook on low in a sauce pan until heated through.

My Take

And that's it. Pretty easy to throw together and have on a weeknight with a leftover Sunday pot roast. I didn't have to add any extra seasoning since I used everything that was already seasoned, but if you feel it is a bit bland, feel free to add a pinch of salt and some other seasonings. I think I may have added a touch of salt and pepper. You can also add some more veggies to it. I typically just stick with the carrots, as that's what's leftover when I cook a roast, but I think peas would be great as well.

This is a great base which you can personalize and really run with. Have you made this and made  it your own? How did you personalize it?

Beef Enchiladas

I love Mexican food. When I was pregnant with Lucy, I craved Mexican food all the time. Thankfully, I didn't burn myself out on it, so I still make these amazing enchiladas as often as I'm able. They're probably not totally authentic, but they taste good, so for my American taste buds, they work. I'll talk more about them after the recipe.

Beef Enchiladas
(Printable Version)

Ingredients

• 1 pound lean (at least 80%) ground beef
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 2/3 cup water
• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons chopped fresh or 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano leaves
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
• 1 can (15 oz) tomato sauce
• 8 corn tortillas (5 or 6 inch)
• Shredded cheese, sour cream, and chopped onions, if desired

Directions

• Heat oven to 350°F.

• In 10-inch skillet, cook beef over medium heat 8 to 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until brown; drain. Stir in sour cream, 1 cup cheese, the parsley and pepper. Cover and remove from heat.

• In 2-quart saucepan, heat water, chili powder, oregano, cumin, chilies, garlic, and tomato sauce to boiling, stirring occasionally; reduce heat. Simmer uncovered 5 minutes. Pour into ungreased 9-inch pie plate.
• Dip each tortilla into sauce in pie plate to coat both sides. Spoon about 1/4 cup beef mixture onto each tortilla; roll tortilla around filling. Place seam side down in ungreased 11x7-inch glass baking dish. Pour remaining sauce over enchiladas.

• Bake uncovered about 15 minutes. Top with cheese and cook for additional 5 minutes until cheese is melted and sauce is bubbly. Garnish with shredded cheese, sour cream, and chopped onions.  

My Take

I love this recipe, because you don't use a canned sauce, so you can make it as spicy or mild as you want. The original called for a 4.5 oz can of green chiles in the sauce, but I fear that will make it too spicy for me, and I don't really like my enchilada sauce to be too chunky. 

Most of the time when I make this recipe, I usually use ground turkey. This past time I used a combo, as I only had a half pound of turkey. Also, I find that when I make the sauce as written, I don't have enough left over to pour over the enchiladas, so I usually make 1.5 times the amount of sauce. I found that this gives me enough sauce to pour over them but also gives me the texture that I like from my enchiladas.

A few more notes: For some reason, whenever I roll my tortillas, they always crack. Doesn't matter if they're straight from the fridge, room temperature, or warmed up in the microwave. I just roll with it. By the time they're covered in the sauce and cheese, you can't really tell the difference anyways. May not be the prettiest enchiladas ever, but they sure do taste good!

Easy Mushroom Pizza Pie

This past week I've started doing something I've heard about but never done. I've started to "celebrate" Meatless Mondays. Every Monday I'll be a vegetarian for one day. I'm hoping it will help me make better choices of what I eat, plus it makes me eat my fruits and veggies rather than starches and meat.

So yesterday I made a recipe which I have done before but haven't shared on here. It's called Easy Mushroom Pizza Pie. It's very easy to put together, although I may tweak a few things the next time I make it. Here we go!

Ingredients

• 1 (4 oz) can mushroom pieces and stems, drained
• 1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 3 large eggs
• 3/4 cup Original Bisquick mix
• 1/2 cup pizza sauce
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 to 1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese (4 to 6 oz)

Directions

• Heat oven to 425°F. Spray 10-inch glass pie plate with cooking spray. Sprinkle mushrooms, and 1/3 cup Parmesan cheese in pie plate.

•  In medium bowl, stir milk, eggs, and Biquick mix with fork or wire whisk until blended. Pour over vegetable mixture in pie plate.

• Bake 20 minutes. Spread pizza sauce over top. Top with remaining ingredients. Bake 15 to 20 minutes longer or until cheese is light brown. Let stand 5 minutes before cutting.

My Take

What I love most about how this turns out is the egginess of it. Reminds me of a souffle, but a lot quicker and easier. The original recipe called for onions both on the bottom and top, but since I don't like onions, I just took them out. If you would like to add them back in, then for the bottom, add 2/3 cup chopped and for the top put 1/3 cup cup. You can also add 1/2 cup chopped green bell pepper for the top as well.

I think next time I make this, I'm going to use fresh mushrooms and sauté them before putting them into the pie plate. I think that will give it more flavor than just using the canned mushrooms.

So, have you ever done a Meatless Monday, or anything like that? How did it work out for you. Was there any recipes you turned to?

Slow Cooker Chicken Pot Pie

I recently had a couple of boneless skinless chicken breasts hanging out in my freezer that I wanted to use up. I know chicken is healthy for me, but I get burned out on it super fast, and I don't like eating just a chicken breast. So, I scoured the Internet, searching for something I could make with the few ingredients I had on hand (didn't do a good job this week on thinking ahead grocery-wise).

What I came up with was a slow cooker chicken and dumplings. I found a few recipes, and then I noticed some of them added veggies, so to me, it seemed more like a slow cooker chicken pot pie. I thought, "Hey, I have some canned veggies that have been lounging around my pantry for a long time. This'll be a good time to use them! There's also some baby carrots which need to be used up too!" So I did some more digging. I found a recipe that seemed good to me, but I decided to change it to suit what I had on hand. So the following is what I put in mine. In the "My Take" section, I'll let you know what I liked, didn't like, and what I would change next time I make it.

A few of the ingredients you'll need

Ingredients 

• 2 large skinless boneless chicken breasts
• 1 cup chopped carrots
• 2 (10.5 oz) cans condensed cream of chicken soup
• Garlic salt
• Celery salt
• Ground black pepper
• Mrs. Dash's no-salt original recipe
• Onion poweder
• 1/2 can sweet peas
• 1/2 can green beans
• 1 1/3 cup Bisquick mix
• 6 tablespoons milk

Directions

Throw everything except for the Bisquick mix and milk into the crock pot, just sprinkling the garlic salt, celery salt, ground black pepper, Mrs. Dash's, and onion powder onto the chicken breasts to season them. Cook on Low for 5 hours. After 5 hours, shred the chicken in the crock pot. Cook for 1 more hour on Low. Mix the Bisquick and milk together to make dumplings. Drop the dumplings, spoonful by spoonful, into the crock pot. Cook on High for 45 minutes to 1 hour. Dish is done when the dumplings are cooked all the way through.

After the chicken has been shredded

My Take

I was pretty unsure as to how this was going to turn out, but my fears were proved wrong. This was amazing! I was worried that it would be too salty or the dumplings wouldn't cook right, but nope! I was pretty amazed that the dumplings cooked so well in the slow cooker.

I initially made the dumpling recipe as listed on the Bisquick box, but it didn't look like enough, so I doubled it. I'm glad I did.

People have also used canned biscuits, but since I didn't have any on hand, I just did the dumplings. It's also said that you should cut the chicken into chunks before you put it in the crock pot, but I've found that if you leave the breasts whole, they hold their juices better and stay more moist.

If you love home made chicken pot pie, I highly encourage you to make this. Feel free to substitute your own veggies and add some more. I think next time I make it I may add a bit of water, as I wanted it a bit more soupy. The biscuits/dumplings tend to suck up the moisture once added.

In conclusion, this will be added to my crock pot recipes and I will definitely make this during the winter months. Especially when the temperatures are as cold as they are today: 1 with a windchill of  -2!

Spicy Chicken Taco Soup

I love chicken tortilla soup and recently I've been craving a bowl. So I jumped online to check out a few recipes. I knew I wanted to cook it in the slow cooker, as Lucy screaming through the baby gate makes it difficult to spend a lot of time cooking in the kitchen. Because I was looking for a specific flavor, I took different ideas from several different recipes. I had bought a smoked chicken from which I made a stock from and used the meat in this recipe. The meat added a very delicious flavor to the whole soup.

Ingredients

• 2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
• 1 (8 oz) can tomato sauce
• 1 (14.5 oz) can diced tomatoes with green chilies
• 1 (15 oz) can black beans
• 1 (16 oz) can chili beans
• 1 can kernel corn (I used about a cup of frozen)
• 1 cup chicken broth
• 1 tablespoons homemade taco seasoning
• Cilantro to taste
• Sour cream, yellow corn tortilla chips, shredded cheese, avocado, etc. for garnishing

Directions

Dump everything expect for the cilantro into the slow cooker and mix well. Cook on Low for 5 hours. Shred the chicken and add the cilantro. Cook for another 30 minutes. Serve topped with whatever garnishes you wish.

My Take

I called this "spicy" because to me, all I could taste was heat unless I dumped quite a bit of sour cream into it. I'm not quite sure where it came from, so I'm going to make some tweaks to it and make it more tame for me. I'm also not sure if the cilantro being cooked into the soup really added anything, so next time I may just save it for a garnish.

Because I used pre-cooked chicken, the cooking time may have to be extended if you're using raw chicken breasts.

Have you been craving any soups this winter? Have you done any experimenting with recipes you've found? Do you have a favorite taco/tortilla soup you make every time? Let me know in the comments. I love hearing from you guys. :)