The Slow Cooker Returns

My 7 year-old just started baseball practice a few weeks and has practice 3 times week from 4:30-6:30. By the time we get home it’s almost 7:00 and we are all starving and the baby is about ready for bed. I have rarely used my slow cooker this past year, being home so much due to the pandemic and all. Baseball practice means I have had to break it out again! I throw dinner in the slow cooker in the afternoon and we have a nice hot, delicious dinner waiting for us when we get home.

We all love tacos, so slow cooker taco chicken is a regular in our home. I used to use a red salsa but I recently tried salsa verde and I can’t see us ever going back! It’s so delicious. My husband lived in New Mexico for 2 years and while there, he learned to love green chilies on everything. So, I add a can of diced green chilies to the salsa verde which makes for a tasty addition. While the canned green chilies are good, if you have a Costco nearby I highly recommend their jarred roasted version. It’s so flavorful and really makes a difference in the end result. However, the canned version works great too.

Tacos and Tortillas

Tacos have always been one of my most favorite foods. When I was growing up my mom made tacos for dinner quite often. I grew up in Iowa and well, authentic Mexican food isn’t really a thing there. That didn’t stop us. The tacos we grew up on were anything but authentic but they are still one of my favorites. My mom would fry flour tortillas in oil, which we would then top with seasoned ground beef, tomatoes, lettuce, onion, shredded cheddar cheese, sour cream, and Pace salsa. They were so good and as I’m writing this my mouth is watering. I wasn’t introduced to authentic Mexican tacos until I was in college, and while I love them so much, my mom’s tacos are still a strong rival.

While my mom’s tacos are delicious, they aren’t allergy-friendly with the flour tortillas, cheese, and sour cream. I never liked home-cooked corn tortillas until I had to start buying them after learning my oldest son was allergic to wheat. For the first several months I could only eat them fried but now I love them however they are cooked. We were living in South Central Los Angeles at the time and after my husband introduced me to the plethora of authentic tacos there, I learned to love them. I now prefer corn tortillas to flour tortillas.

Salsa Verde Tacos

Tacos can very easily be made allergy-friendly. They just need a few switch ups and then you have a perfectly safe and delicious dinner. Switching flour tortillas for corn tortillas is very easy to do. If you don’t care for corn tortillas then try frying them in a little oil. They’re so good that way. Secondly, dropping the sour cream and cheese is an easy dairy-free alternative. These Slow Cooker Salsa Verde chicken tacos are so flavorful that you won’t be sacrificing anything by forgoing the dairy.

This Salsa Verde Taco Chicken can be served as traditional tacos inside a tortilla, or you can serve it as a taco/burrito bowl. We love burrito bowls almost as much as we love tacos. To serve this chicken as a burrito bowl, just serve over rice and then top with your favorite allergy-friendly taco toppings. If I have enough foresight, sometimes it’s easier to cook up a batch of rice instead of cooking individual tortillas. Sometimes. Either way it’s delicious.

Allergy-Friendly Taco Toppings

Those food allergies don’t have to hold you back from creating a delicious taco. I think tacos are one of the easiest things to make allergy-safe while keeping all the flavors. There are so many delicious allergy-friendly topping choices. Here are a few of our favorites:

• Sliced lemons or limes
• Chopped green chilies – the flame roasted are best!
• Tomato
• Onion
• Lettuce
• Salsa
• Hot sauce – we like El Pato
• Pico de gallo
• Guacamole or sliced avocado
• Black, pinto, or refried beans
• Grilled corn
• Bell peppers
• Jalapenos
• Habenero peppers – for those of you who are crazy like my husband 🙂

How To Make Slow COoker Salsa Verde Chicken

Place the chicken breasts in the slow cooker and then add 1 cup of salsa verde, 4 ounces diced green chilies, and cook on high for 3 and a half hours. That’s it. It’s so simple. If you don’t like green chilies just leave them out. The chicken is still delicious without it. This recipe is really a life saver for those super busy days when you just need to throw something in the slow cooker quickly. If my husband will be home we serve this in tacos and he starts cooking the tortillas when we leave the baseball field. If he won’t be at home then I put some rice in the rice cooker and we eat it as a burrito bowl with everything hot and ready for us when we walk in the door. After two hours of practice we are all HANGRY!

If you need an easy grab and go snack for when you are out and about to avoid hangry children (or if you get hangry yourself – I totally do), we love these gluten-free banana muffins. We often throw a few in our bag as we leave for baseball so we aren’t quite so starving by the time we get home. These muffins were my first successful gluten-free, allergy-friendly recipe that I created. They are very easy to make. We love to make a big batch of them and keep them in a freezer-safe Ziploc bag. Then when we need a quick on-the-go snack, we grab a few and toss them in a take-a-long container.

Slow Cooker Salsa Verde Taco Chicken

This chicken is so quick and easy – perfect for a busy night. It's perfect inside tacos or on top of rice.

5 from 3 votes

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 10 minutes mins

Cook Time 3 hours hrs 30 minutes mins

Total Time 3 hours hrs 40 minutes mins

Course Dinner, Lunch, Main Course

Cuisine Mexican

Servings 6

Calories 152 kcal

Equipment

• Slow cooker

Ingredients

  

• 2 large chicken breasts mine were about 14 ounces each
• 1 cup salsa verde
• 4 ounce can diced green chilies

Instructions

 

• Add all ingredients to the slow cooker. Cover and cook on high heat for 3½ hours or until chicken reaches an internal temperature of 165° and chicken is tender. Shred with a fork and serve inside tacos or on top of rice.

Keyword Chicken, Green Chilies, Rice, Salsa Verde, Slow cooker, Tacos

Did you make this recipe? If you did I would love to see it! Please share a picture of it on Instagram and tag me, @Allergyalamode and use the hashtag #allergyalamode.

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