I ♥ pinterest. From homemade Valentines, to kitchen remodel, to new healthy recipes–the inspiration is all there. Tonight’s dinner is no exception.
Mondays and Wednesdays I play Mama Taxi and arrive home at dinner time. By then blood sugars are low and tempers are high, so using the Slow Cooker is a must.
The original recipe for this dish came from Jenna at Held Scraptive. I modified it to fit my pantry stash and to enlarge it for our family.
Creamy Southwest Soup
2 lbs of boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 can tomates and green chilies, undrained
2 cans whole kernel corn, undrained
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed (we used 2 cups of black beans cooked from dry)
1 brick, 8 oz, 1/3 less fat cream cheese
1 envelope ranch dressing mix (I had some of JPs Bacon Ranch Mix that was a gift that I used, but next time I’ll use a homemade ranch mix recipe.)
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp chili powder
1 tsp garlic salt
1/4 cup cilantro chopped
1 cup brown rice, cooked (we had some leftover from Sunday so I threw it in to make the soup stretch.) (I also threw in half a can of leftover enchilada sauce, just to use it up.)
In a 4-5 quart slow cooker, combine tomatoes, corn, and beans. Place the brick of cream cheese on top, in the center away from the sides. Place chicken in a single layer over the top, sprinkle with spices. Cover and cook on high for 3-4 hours. Turn off the heat. Shred the chicken with two forks, and stir in the cream cheese, brown rice, and cilantro. We served ours with cornbread muffins.
How it went over with the family: I thought it was delicious (but I will eat anything….). It fit in well with my FYM healthy eating plan. 1 Cup has 255 calories; 22g carbs, 7g fat, and 22 g protein. Darren said, “Wow, this has great flavor but it’s going to be spicy for the kids.” Heidi drank 3 tall glasses of water but ate her whole bowl. She declared it tasty but HOT. Caleb, Heather and Brandon ate it all without a word (but I had to feed Brandon’s to him). Dub didn’t mind the spiciness but hated the look of it, especially the tomatoes. Darren had to feed him every bite and hid the tomatoes under stuff. All in all for as picky as my family is, this is a recipe that I would try again.
I am just about sold on boneless skinless chicken. It has been going on sale around here between $1-$1.39 a lb and to come home and just shred with 2 forks and eat was a huge mind reliever. If DH was out of work, I would have used a $.69/lb whole chickens and not complain, but wowza was this easy and delicious.
Hi there! This looks yummy. I went over to follow you on pinterest but wanted to make an itty bitty suggestion….some folks have a pin it button on their blog posts (I am not techno savvy enough to tell you how to add the button) and I would have loved to pinned this post 🙂
Thanks for your blog and newsletter!
I always dish out my kids’ servings before I add the spices. Their tongues haven’t been ruined by a lifetime of excess salt, and they don’t like spicy food. This allows us to all be happy without cooking “separate” meals which I REFUSE to do!
This recipe was very good. I have picky eaters and everyone loved it.
I just made this one: (very similar)
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/slow-cooker-chicken-taco-soup/detail.aspx
I tried this too this week! Yumminess. I am also in love with Pinterest. 🙂
I make something extremely similar, but I put the tomatos and onions (mine also calls for those) into the food processor, so no one knows they are there. I have a family full of tomato snobs, and I loooove them, so I’ve started hiding them 😉 I also add great white northern beans to mine. And a tablespoon of lime.
Draining the Rotel will cut down on some of the spice. It will also thicken it up a little bit. I say that because our favorite way to eat this is scooped into tortillas. I can buy/make tortillas super cheap and I think it stretches the meal further that way. It’s also good piled onto chips like nachos if you have tortilla chips around.
I also wondered about the boneless/skinless chicken. I love to use this because it’s faster and easier and encourages me to cook rather than resort to take-out when I’m in a hurry. I was feeling guilty about the “convenience” factor, though, equating it to higher cost. But this past week I boiled two whole chickens instead, but I felt like I didn’t get as much meat from them as I expected. So I think if you’re getting a good price on the boneless/skinless, you’re probably not spending that much more for the convenience. If I were really going to test this, I guess I would need to cook both kinds and weigh how much usable meat I got from each. Maybe some day…
Samantha, I did this for you! It’s been awhile but I cooked both kinds and weighed the meat and told how cheap the boneless would have to be to be as good a deal. Try a blog search for “whole chicken” and see what comes up.
My family LOVES this recipe! THANK YOU!!! 🙂
This is my favorite!