The Healthy Tales

Posts Tagged ‘crockpot’

After lazy chicken you probably didn’t think I’d find something even easier and lazier did you?  Well, I scoured the internet and my slow cooker cookbooks over the weekend and I found one!  This recipe is called easy chicken and it really was easy.  All you need is 4 chicken breast halves (boneless, skinless of course), a packet of italian dressing mix, and a cup of water.  Yup that is it!  So what do you do?  Here is the recipe:

Easy Chicken

1. 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2. 1 packet of Italian Dressing Mix (found on salad dressing aisle)
3. 1 cup of warm water or chicken broth

Line the slow cooker/crockpot with disposable liner.  Put chicken on the bottom of the slow cooker.  I used a mallet (is that the right word?) and gently beat them until they flattened out a bit.  Next, sprinkle chicken with the Italian dressing mix.  Lastly, pour cup of water/chicken broth over chicken. Cook on low for 8-10 hours. The ideal crockpot size is 4 quart so that the crockpot is 2/3 the way full.  I have a 6 quart so I just added more water so the chicken wouldn’t dry out.  Adding the water diluted the Italian flavor but it kept the chicken moist so I can’t complain.  Next time I will just double the entire recipe.  The recipe makes 4 servings.

Overall, the meal was good.  I served it with a salad and corn.  You could probably serve it over brown rice as well.  I opted for cooking on 7 hours since I didn’t fill the crockpot 2/3 the way full and everything turned out fine.  As previously reported the Italian seasoning was diluted so next time I’ll just double everything and it should turn out fine.  I didn’t calculate Weight Watcher points but I would imagine it would be one point per ounce of chicken.

I was looking online a few weeks ago for slow cooker recipes – BBQ chicken to be specific – that would be relatively easy to make.  I typically turn to the cookbook, Fix It and Forget It Lightly, for all of my slow cooker recipe needs.  But this time I was unable to find a relatively simple BBQ chicken recipe.  Every recipe in the book required a minimum 10 ingredients because you would be making the BBQ sauce from scratch and not using the bottled sauce.

I was surfing and came across A Year of CrockPotting blog.  Basically, the blogger used a crockpot to cook/make something every day in 2008.  I have spent hours on her blog copying recipes into Word so I can put them into my rotation because they are so tasty especially since she includes pictures of the ingredients used and how it should look when it is done cooking.  I highly recommend this blog if you crockpot.  There really are 365 different recipes, believe me I was digging through the posts but was not able to finish reading it.

The first recipe I tried from the website was Lazy Chicken.  It really is just that – lazy chicken. LOL.  All you need is a pound or two of chicken, a crockpot liner, and a jar of spaghetti sauce.  It was very quick and easy to throw together during the tail end of busy season.  Here is the official recipe and directions.

Lazy Chicken

1-2 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken

1 jar spaghetti sauce (depending on the amount of chicken you may need 2)

1. Line Crockpot with liner.
2. Put chicken in. Cover with sauce.
3. Cook on high for 8 hours (I did 6 hours and it turned out just fine)
4. When you get home boil some noodles for 20 minutes. While noodles are going shred up the chicken with a fork in the pot then serve chicken mixture on top of noodles.

This made approximately 8 generous servings mainly due to the amount of sauce I used.  Next time if I use the restaurant bought (homemade) spaghetti I will be throwing in 2 pounds of chicken and then freezing half of the mixture.  I would estimate about 6 Weight Watcher points per serving maybe less if you use Whole Wheat noodles.

One thing I dislike about my job is that we have a busy season stretching from the beginning of January until the end of February and sometimes into March where we are working and ordering in delivery food every single day.  It gets very old, repetitive, and unhealthy.  One thing I promised myself this year was that I would not be ordering in junk everyday.  I would either bring food from home or I’d order a salad and use my own dressing.  I have to say that I have been successful so far thanks to lean cuisine and their expanded line of frozen meals.  I have not gained a pound but I haven’t lost anything either.  I guess I should be happy about the no gain when I’m sitting on my butt 12 hours a day.

So earlier this week, I decided that I would drag my slow cooker out and make something that I could bring to work.  I had a pound of ground beef and not a clue what to do with it.  So I pulled out my favorite cookbook and found  a recipe for Beef-Lite.  The recipe seemed easy enough and only had 4 ingredients so I gave it a whirl.  Overall it was a good and quick thing to throw into the slow cooker over night while I slept.

Beef-Lite

1 pound extra lean ground beef
1 package dry onion soup mix
1 10 3/4oz can of 98% fat free cream of mushroom soup
1 10 3/4oz can of 98% fat free cream of celery soup

1. Spray slow cooker with fat-free cooking spray or insert 1 liner
2. Combine all ingredients in slow cooker
3. Cook on low for 6-8 hours
4. Serve over brown rice

This recipe made approximately 6 half cup servings when placed over a half cup of rice.  It was fairly tasty but could use a little seasoning but I’m not sure yet what I would add.  It comes out to about 5 weight watcher points per serving including the brown rice.  Not too shabby!