Crock Pot Creations

I recently learned the coolest trick with the crock pot. It's really the best thing to happen to my crock pot since I learned that cream of chicken soup can be mixed with anything to create a good CP meal.

It was this super simple way to make shredded chicken from Recipe Zaar. You just get yourself six boneless/skinless chicken breasts, throw them in the crock pot with a little water, S&P and garlic and cook on low for 8-10 hours. When it's done, you pull it apart with forks.

Now I've done something similar before but it involved more ingredients. The genius behind this one was that they suggested storing it in several baggies and freezing it. Then you'd have all this chicken on-the-ready for BBQ sandwiches, soups, pizza and enchiladas.

On the day that I cooked my shredded chicken, I made BBQ sandwiches.
Then I froze it--just like the Recipe Zaar people told me to--and a week later (last night) I created a brilliant Mexican/BBQ dish.

I haven't named it yet. I'm going to name it right now:

Elsa's Mexi-Q Casserole!

I love it.

Here's what it looks like and let me just insert this caveat: I took this picture of the leftovers so it looks sort of nasty. But when Frank ate it last night he said, "This might be a ten!" I'm gonna round that up to a real ten.



Here's what's in it and again, I totally just made this up on the fly (with a toddler scrambling under foot the entire time, I'd like to add):

I defrosted the frozen shredded chicken that I had bagged up from the crock pot.
Put frozen shredded in a big pot and drizzled some olive oil. Cooked on medium.
Added seasonings like Crushed Red Pepper, S&P, Cumin and this Ancho Chili stuff my mom brought me.
Threw in a can of black beans, drained.
Tossed in a can of Rotel, drained. I don't like things soupy!
Cooked on medium a littler longer.

Took some tortillas, shredded them (like I was making King Ranch Chicken) and put them in a baking dish.
Put spinach leaves on top of that to give the dish some veggies.
Poured 1/2 the chicken, black beans and Rotel mixture over that.
Another layer of tortillas
Rest of the chicken mixture
Poured some salsa on top.

Baked in oven at 350 for 25 minutes.

You'll notice I didn't add cheese which is a staple in any Mexican dish. I'm currently avoiding dairy so I just added shredded cheese to Frank's individual servings.
I thought it was awesome without cheese though!

Frank's quote: "This is so good! It's like BBQ and Mexican all mixed together!" And then came the ten rating...well, the "maybe a ten" which is good enough for me!