Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Easy Crock Pot Chicken Recipes

With the temptation of fast food, processed meals, and eating out, it's difficult to spend time to prepare good, healthy, home-cooked meals. If you're like many, the last thing you want to do after coming home from work is prepare a gourmet dinner. By using your crock pot and spending 5-10 minutes each morning, you can come home to delicious home-cooked meals without hours of preparation right before dinnertime. Below are three quick and easy chicken slow cooker recipes you're sure to enjoy, and each with 7 ingredients or less! Salsa Chicken Ingredients: 6 boneless skinless chicken breasts 1 ½ cups salsa 1 tsp ground cumin 3 tbsp lime juice Spray slow cooker with non-stick cooking spray. Place chicken in slow cooker, pour salsa over chicken. Cover and cook on low 6-7 hours or high 3 hours, until chicken is tender and no longer pink. Stir in cumin and lime juice, cover and cook an additional 15 minutes. Note: For an extra spicy kick, add a pinch of ground red chili powder with the cumin and lime juice. Lemon Chicken Ingredients: 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts ¼ lemon juice 1/3 cup water 2 cloves minced garlic 1 tsp thyme Spray slow cooker with non-stick cooking spray. Place chicken in crock pot. Combine juice, water, garlic, and thyme in a small bowl, pour over chicken. Cover and cook on low 8 hours or high 4 hours. Ranch Chicken Ingredients: 6 boneless skinless chicken breasts 1 can condensed cream of chicken soup 1 envelope ranch dressing mix ½ cup water ½ cup sour cream 2 tbsp ranch dressing 2 tbsp flour Spray slow cooker with non-stick cooking spray. Place chicken breasts in crock pot. In a small bowl, combine soup, ranch dressing mix, and water; pour over chicken. Cover and cook on low 8 hours or high 4 hours. Remove chicken from crock pot. Stir in sour cream, ranch dressing, and flour; replace chicken. Cover and cook on high 20 minutes. Note: Ranch chicken leftovers are perfect for sandwiches, chicken tortilla wraps, or a tasty chicken casserole.

Healthy Crock Pot Recipes With Easy Preparation

The other day I was looking through my grocer's weekly sale flyer and I found myself thinking, "The easier the preparation, the worse it is for you." Think about fast food. No preparation, but completely unhealthy. I continued my thoughts through meal preparations - frozen TV dinners, frozen pizza, frozen "meal in a bag", boxed dinners, the list goes on and on. We are so concerned with doing things quickly we are hindering our health by jamming our bodies full of preservatives and things with names too long to state and too difficult to pronounce. I pictured my grocery store, which wasn't difficult since I'm usually there at least twice a week. I love my grocer's produce section, seeing all the fresh fruits and vegetables; I usually spend most of my time there. However, thinking of all the isles that follow, my thoughts were once again confirmed. Packaged food after packaged food - even in the organic isle! I know that cooking with natural ingredients is the best way to go, but how are we to do it if we're bombarded with packaged, boxed, preserved food? The Paleo Recipe Book Thinking about my own cooking, I know that I use more "pre-packaged" items than I probably should. For convenience sake, I often used frozen vegetables and canned tomatoes. I feed my kids boxed macaroni and cheese. However, they don't eat frozen dinners, ready-made frozen chicken, and we never eat at fast food restaurants. These thoughts drove me to research my own recipes; were there a handful of crock pot recipes with extremely easy preparation that are healthy? I did find a bunch, and although the recipes with canned soups tend to be higher in sodium, I believe I found a nice balance between easy preparation and health. Plus, every recipe on the list has 10 ingredients or less. You can view these recipes here. When it comes right down to it, we want to be healthy and feed our families healthy meals. However, our busy lives often take over and prevent us from doing so. I hope that I have offered you some options to avoid the frozen dinners and fast food restaurants and create healthy meals with ease. Get Professionally Written PLR Recipes And Food Articles Monthly. PLR Articles About Frugal Cooking, Meal Planning, Cookbook Ideas And More.