Crock Pot Chicken Tacos

Ohmygosh!  I'm finally bringing you this recipe!


This dish came about last year when Nicholas was feverishly finishing his last semester of school.  This left lots of nights and weekends where the Munchkin and I were just a two-some.  I always like to cook a nice healthy meal and usually they boy's play while I cook, but with no Nick I was trying too hard to multi-task.  I didn't realize it until one night the Munchkin said "you need to come in here and play with me or I'm giving you a time-out!".  Say whoa!  The kid was talking to me for sure.

I found a similar version of this recipe shortly after and modified it to fit our needs.  Dinner that can be made before breakfast is a great thing.  Thursday Night Crock Pot Chicken Tacos is now a tradition in our house.  By the time we get home dinner is already done and we are free to play all we want.

What's your favorite quick and easy dish?

Here's the skivvy -

Ingredients:
1 large frozen chicken breast
1/2 jar of your favorite salsa
1/2 cup frozen corn
1 tbsp cumin
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder
1/4-1/2 tsp red cayenne pepper
Your favorite taco fixins (tortillas, cheese, sour cream onions, avocado, lettuce, more salsa, the possibilities are endless!)

How to:

Cover the bottom of your crock with the salsa.
Add in seasonings and stir.
Throw in your frozen chicken breast, flip it over once or twice to get it coated in salsa.
Add in your corn.
Put on the lid and set it to low for 6.5 hours.
Once it's done, use two forks to shred the chicken breast and stir it around with the salsa.
Serve the chicken in your taco carrying device as chosen by you.
Enjoy!

Notes:

This recipe is basically un-screw-up-able.  I used to do 2 chicken breasts but we never got through the left-overs, so one works for us.  If you add two to this mix it will work also.  My new crock pot has a nifty setting where once the time is done it automatically switches to warm.  If yours doesn't, just put it on for however long you'll be gone and you'll still be good (I've set it on low up to 8 hours).  My mom made this once with a green chili sauce and it was delicious.  I've added tomatillos, tomatoes, onion....like I said, unscrewupable, do what you like and it will be good.  Unless you add peanut butter or something, but hey, maybe that's your thing.

Tasty Turkey Taco Towers

Alright.  To start, I promise all of my recipe's won't have foods that all begin with the same letter (remember Penne Portabella and Prosciutto?).  I'm sorry, I just couldn't help it.

As a kid, taco night was my favorite.  Now, I tend to make taco's with ground turkey instead of ground beef, just to keep them a bit healthier.

Let's meet the suspects:

1/2 pound ground turkey, your tortilla of choice, black beans, red onion, avocado, bell pepper (any color will do), salt & pepper, chili powder, ground cayenne pepper, red pepper flakes, salsa of your choice and:

Oh yeah, and the most important ingredient:

CHEESE!

I should just go ahead and admit now that I'm a little bit Urkel-ish when it comes to cheese.

Being allergic to dairy until I was about 10 created an abnormal love of cheese; proof that absence makes the heart grow fonder.

OK!  Moving on to Tasty Turkey Taco Towers.  When I pulled out what I needed to make this I realized I was out of taco seasoning.  Normally I would use a store bought low-sodium seasoning packet.  But, I was out, so I mocked up my own seasoning using the chili powder, ground cayenne pepper, red pepper flakes, salt & pepper and (oh yeah) garlic salt.  I actually liked it better than the packet.

Start off by browning the turkey meat....

....turkey meat normally produces very little grease (like almost none), so I don't typically drain anything from the pan.  Also, we only use 1/2 of a 1 pound package - we usually can't finish the left-overs if we cook it all, so splitting it gives us two meals. 

Once the turkey is getting brown, throw in some chopped red onion....

...after I added the onion, I started my made up seasoning.  I added about 5 shakes of each spice, 2-3 turns on the salt grinder, 3-5 turns on the pepper grinder & about two shakes of garlic salt....

 ...stir it up and add in some chopped bell pepper....

...and also, drain the can of black beans and add them in....

--(I forgot to take a photo so please insert your imagination here)--

Now, tower time.

Heat a non-stick pan and don't grease it with anything, just get it hot.

Put in your first tortilla and put some shredded cheese on top...

...on top of the first layer of cheese, add some of the meat mixture and some sliced avocado, then more cheese!

Then put tortilla number 2 on top and repeat.  At the end your stack should have 3 tortilla's...

...let it heat for a bit, then flip it & let it heat some more....

take it out and top it with, of course, more cheese, some sliced avocado and salsa...

....Viola!

We have never made the tower format before, we usually do just regular old taco's, but Mr. O and I came up with this on the fly.  It was good and the presentation was more interesting than plain old tacos.

I've posted the whole recipe on Tasty Kitchen - Tasty Turkey Taco Towers

Before I go, a note about the tortillas....

I found these tasty tortillas at Trader Joe's (LOVE Trader Joe's) recently.  They are super good!  Even plain (without cheese!).