Chicken Mexican Haystacks

This is one of my favorite recipes, it's just so good! I've made this in a slow cooker and also my instant pot. In the Instant Pot, I've cooked the chicken breasts from frozen with a couple of cups of chicken broth for about 40 mins and then shredded the chicken, I remove some of the broth and add the rest of the ingredients and put the setting on saute for a while to warm everything up adding some broth if needed. It makes it pretty saucy, but that makes it good when you serve it over rice. 

You can go HERE for the original recipe. The recipe and photo come from togetherasfamily.com. 

Ingredients

• 3 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 1 can (15 oz) black beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 can (115 oz) diced tomatoes, undrained (I used spicy Rotel)
• 1 -1/2 cups frozen corn or 1 can

Cream Tex-Mex Sauce

• 1 3/4 cups chicken broth
• 1 can chopped green chilies
• 4 oz cream cheese
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 small sweet onion, roughly chopped
• 1 packet ranch seasoning mix
• 1 packet taco seasoning

Mexican Haystacks

• Corn chips
• white or brown rice
• taco toppings of your choice (shredded cheese, lettuce, tomato, avocado, onion, olives, jalapenos, etc)

Instructions

Put chicken breasts into the slow cooker. Add the beans, tomatoes, and corn. 

In a blender combine all ingredients for the creamy sauce and blend until smooth and combined. 

Pour into the slow cooker and mix everything together. Cover with the lid and cook on low for 5-6 hours or until chicken is tender and can easily shred. 

Shred chicken and add back into the slow cooker Serve with rice, corn chips, and toppings fo your choice. You can also keep this on the warm setting until ready to serve. 

Crock Pot Barbecue Ribs

So I use to not be a very big ribs fan....but then I found this recipe and oh ya..we love it! It's so easy to do.

1. Remove the membrane from the back of the ribs by sliding your finger under and pulling it up and off the ribs. (It tends to make the ribs more chewy) 

2. If you like to put a rub on your ribs first (not totally necessary but adds more flavour) do that now. (You can do a salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika combo)

3. Put the rack of ribs in your crock pot (you can line it with a liner for easier clean up). I have a large oval crock pot so it fits a lot of ribs in it. With each rack add some of your favorite barbecue sauce. We like Bull's Eye original or Sweet Baby Ray's. Don't use up all the sauce as you will need some later. 

4. Cook on low for 8-10 hours depending on the amount of ribs you have cooking. 

5. Line a cookie sheet with foil. Carefully put the ribs on the cookie sheet and add more barbecue sauce on top. 

6. Put in the oven on broiler setting. Cook for about 3-5 mins or until the sauce begins to bubble and caramelize. Alternatively we like to throw them on the BBQ at this point on nicer days but still really great in the oven. 

Enjoy your ribs! 

Creamy Crock Pot Italian Chicken

Love this recipe and have made it often. So so yummy. 

4-6 (depending on size) frozen boneless skinless chicken breasts

1 envelope dry Italian salad dressing mix

1 can cream of chicken soup

1 block of cream cheese

Place chicken in sprayed (with Pam) crock pot. Mix package of salad dressing mix with cream of chicken soup together and add on top of chicken. Cook on high for about 6-8 hours or low head 10-12. For the last half hour you can remove the chicken and shred if you would like or leave whole. Add block of cream cheese to the soup mixture and blend well. Add chicken back to crock pot. 

Serve with egg noodles, pasta or rice. Really good with broccoli added as well. Or make into a pasta dish and add a little bit of chicken broth, sundried tomotoes, spinach and cooked pasta.

Side note: put it over rice for Hawaiian Haystacks. Soooo good!