Hungry Girl's Slow Cookin' Mexican Chicken + Baked Chicken Taquitos

Happy 5 de Mayo everyone! Here is a tasty Mexican inspired recipe for you. Do you ever whip up a crock pot recipe, plug it in, leave for the day and constantly worry that it is going to start your house on fire?  In the olden days I used to worry causing me to only use my crock pot on the weekends.  And usually on those weekend crock pot days I would get impatient and eat my crock pot meal before it was really ready because it smelled amazing (of course, after it was cooked through but maybe not cooked to it's full potential).  Anyways, after doing some online research I decided to just cook my crock pot recipe at night, on low, for 8ish hours, and then transfer it to a glass container in the morning and refrigerate all day. Which brings me to this tasty recipe!  It is actually a two part-er.  First you make the crock pot chicken and THEN you use the chicken to make crispy crunchy oven baked Taquitos.  Or you could put the chicken on a salad.  Or use the chicken in regular soft shell tacos.  Or just eat the chicken plain like I did right out of the crock!  You get the idea...

Servings: This recipe is for 8 Taquitos, but you will have plenty of leftover crock pot chicken to use as you wish
Serving Size: 4 Taquitos
Points Plus: Chicken - 3pp per 1/2 cup, Taquitos - 8pp
Prep Time: Chicken - 1 minute, Taquitos - 10 minutes
Cook Time: Chicken - 8 hours, Taquitos - 20-25 minutes
Level of Difficulty: Medium

Ingredients
Hungry Girl's Slow Cookin' Mexican Chicken
1 cup canned crushed tomatoes

1/2 cup jarred roasted red peppers

1/4 cup diced green chilies

1 T dry taco seasoning (OR you could make your own like I did)

1/2 T garlic powder

1/4 t. crushed red pepper flakes

1/8 t black pepper

1 1/2 lb chicken breasts

1/8 t kosher salt or more to taste

Baked Taquitos
1 cup of Hungry Girl's Slow Cookin' Mexican Chicken
8 small corn tortillas, I like Trader Joes brand
1/4 cup fresh cilantro or parsley
1/2 cup salsa
2 T light sour cream
8 t reduced fat cheese
1 t olive oil
Cooking spray

Directions

Crock Pot Chicken
Put all Crock Pot Chicken ingredients in the crock. Mix around and cook for 3-4 hours on low OR 8 hours on high. If you are a wussy like me cook it while you sleep! After the chicken is finished cooking use the back of a wooden spoon to shred it.  Or, if you are crazy and like to do dishes, transfer it to your kitchen aid, attach your paddle and whip it until it has shredded.

Baked Taquitos
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees and spray a baking pan with cooking spray. Wet a paper towel, and place corn tortillas between the wet paper towel and microwave for 1 minute.  Do this in batches, 2 tortillas as a time.  This will prevent the tortillas from cracking as you roll them and you do not want to skip this step.

Lay tortillas out on your counter, and put 2 T of shredded chicken in a line at the bottom of the tortilla (not in the center). Add 1 t of cheese over chicken and starting at the end closest to the chicken, roll the Taquito tightly like a cigar.  Place the rolled taquito on your prepared baking dish seam-side-down.  This will prevent the taquito from unrolling in the oven.  Repeat this step with all 8 tortillas. Put your 1 t of olive oil in a small bowl, and using a silicon brush, brush the top side of all of the taquitos, will help them crisp up in the oven.

Place your baking dish in the oven for about 10 minutes.  After 10 minutes flip the taquitos and bake another 10-15 minutes until crunchy!

Serve with salsa, sour cream and cilantro (or parsley). Enjoy!

Tip
You could use any type of meat inside of these crunchy tortillas, or even do a roasted veggie version!

XOXO - Katie

Chicken recipe for Hungry Girl's 1-2-3 Cookbook.