Slow Cooker Blue Corn Beer Chicken Taco Soup
Speed - 100%
Simplicity - 100%
Tastiness - 94%
98%
Yum!
Easy-Peasy recipe you can just dump in the slow cooker and have 5 hours later. It doesn't take much effort, but it turns out delicious. Plus, find out why I prefer blue corn tortilla chips to yellow or white further below in the content!
Ingredients
Chicken Taco Soup
- 1 Yellow Onion Chopped or Sliced
- 1 Can Chili Beans
- 1 Can Black Beans Drained
- 1 Can Corn Drained
- 1 Can Tomato Sauce
- 1 Can Diced Tomatoes
- 1 Package Taco Seasoning
- 1/2 Can Chipotle Peppers in Adobo (use a full can if you prefer)
- 3 Chicken Breasts
Toppings
- 1/2 Cup Cheddar Cheese Shredded
- 1 Dollop Sour Cream As Needed
- 1 Handfull Blue Corn Tortilla Chips Lightly Crushed
Instructions
- Sauté your onions if you prefer
- Add all cans and beer into the soup
- Add chicken on top of soup mixture
- Cook on LOW for 5 hours
- Shred chicken and add back to slow cooker for 20-30 minutes
- Serve and add chips, sour cream, and cheese individually as desired!
This quick and easy tex-mex can be prepared just by dumping in the ingredients. Unlike some of the more complicated slow cooker meals I've posted, like the oriental spiced osso bucco with spicy cilantro grematola, this will be a familiar flavor that can be prepared in just a matter of minutes with relatively little skill in the kitchen.
The first step is to cut up your onion. You can sauté it if you like – some people do not like the flavor or raw boiled onions, but that's why I only use 1/2 an onion. I like a little flavor, without it being too overpowering. Once that's taken care of and tossed in the cooker, you can open up all your cans and dump them in. I don't use a whole can of corn because I find it makes the soup a little too corny, but you may like it. One can will not be too much in my opinion.
Add your taco seasoning and bottle of beer. You could use the standard Bud Light, Corona, or Coors, but I don't keep that stuff around. I typically drink craft beer, so in this case used a blonde ale. You could also use a pilsner or maybe even a pale ale if it isn't too hoppy. Hops can leave a lightly bitter flavor, so I definitely wouldn't use an IPA. Although, with enough spices in the soup, you might not be able to tell the difference LOL
Lay your chicken on the soup mixture and then set the cooker to LOW for 5 hours. That will get the chicken nice and stringy without making it over dry. However, when you use chicken breasts, I do find they are a bit more dry than other cuts of meat regardless. That's why I always toss them back into the soup for 20 minutes on warm or low just to get them to soak up some of the juices before serving.
After the shredded chicken has set in the soup for about half an hour, it's ready to serve! Now you can add your tortilla chips individually, and any other Tex-Mex toppings. I would have loved a dollop of sour cream on top but ran out from using it for another recipe.
So why did I use blue corn for this recipe? Well, technically it doesn't “add” anything in the sense that you could replace the blue corn chips with any other type and get essentially the same results. Blue corn is slightly different than yellow or white corn though! Blue corn has a higher protein content and it's lower on the glycemic index meaning it doesn't spike your sugar levels as much.
However, we're dealing with a highly processed food here, so the nutritional information is essentially the same, and the flavor is similar, if not exactly the same. Still, looking at blue corn tortilla chips just makes you feel healthier as you chow down so I enjoy them more. I always buy blue!
For this recipe I used the Black & Decker 7-quart slow cooker with the Teal Wave design. I haven't reviewed a lot of Black and Decker slow cookers on this site, but the 7 quart version of slow cooker from this company had some very cool designs worth checking out. I'm always down with trying new brands so I gave it a spin. The slow cooker performed well, although I think I after looking at the teal design and grey crock in my kitchen, I wasn't so hot on the color after a week.
I'd probably stick with something more traditional like the Frigidaire 7 quart programmable or the Hamilton Beach 7-quart programmable.
Ingredients
Chicken Taco Soup
- 1 Yellow Onion Chopped or Sliced
- 1 Can Chili Beans
- 1 Can Black Beans Drained
- 1 Can Corn Drained
- 1 Can Tomato Sauce
- 1 Can Diced Tomatoes
- 1 Package Taco Seasoning
- 1/2 Can Chipotle Peppers in Adobo (use a full can if you prefer)
- 3 Chicken Breasts
Toppings
- 1/2 Cup Cheddar Cheese Shredded
- 1 Dollop Sour Cream As Needed
- 1 Handfull Blue Corn Tortilla Chips Lightly Crushed
Instructions
- Sauté your onions if you prefer
- Add all cans and beer into the soup
- Add chicken on top of soup mixture
- Cook on LOW for 5 hours
- Shred chicken and add back to slow cooker for 20-30 minutes
- Serve and add chips, sour cream, and cheese individually as desired!
Could you post the ounces of each can? The canned tomatoes looks like a larger can than the bean cans in photo. Thank you.
Actually, any can will do, depending on how “tomato-y” you like it. A standard can of diced tomatoes would be 12-15 oz, but the can I used in the photo is 20oz. Thanks for asking!