Friday, May 9, 2008

Kid Friendly Food Fridays - Creamy Chicken Tacos!


Welcome back to Kid-Friendly Food Fridays! We started this weekly event to feature healthy, yummy, delicious, and quick recipes to make for kids! For more information on this weekly event, please visit the Kid Friendly Food Fridays Headquarters! We welcome you to submit recipes and ideas for this feature to gingerlemon_girl at yahoo dot com!





Photo credits: Becky Luigart-Stayver, and Jan Gauto, Cooking Light Sept. 2002


Today's recipe comes from our friend Kelly. You are probably familiar with my friend Kelly by now, as she contributed a recipe for outstanding waffles several weeks ago.
I trust Kelly's opinion on kid-friendly recipes because she is wonderful mom to two young children, who love her gluten free cooking!

During the summer in the Ginger Lemon Girl household, our work schedules change and it always takes Michael and me a few weeks to adjust our new, usually later, dinner routine. We have to come up with fast, easy, and hopefully nutritious meals, or we'll be eating at 9pm every night!






Recently I asked Kelly if she had any really easy, yummy, and FAST ideas for a gluten free dinner. In no time at all Kelly whipped out a recipe for Creamy Chicken Tacos, which she received from her sister. Here are Kelly's thoughts on these great tacos:

"{This recipe} makes enough for 6-10 meals or more. When we make this dish, we can create meals from it for a week! The leftovers also freeze very well. Company loves it and EVERYONE asks for the recipe. There is also a lot you can do with it other than just making tacos:
  • make a taco salad
  • toast a corn tortilla in the oven and, when crispy, add creamy chicken mixture, cheese, lettuce, tomato, salsa, sour cream, whatever you have, for a creamy chicken pizza!
  • I also like to put it on half a corn tortilla, sprinkle with cheese, and microwave it for a minute to melt the cheese. Then I add extra sour cream and salsa, fold it over and eat it with a fork.
With so many options, this recipe never gets old!"


Michael and I made these tacos and we LOVE them! We ate creamy chicken tacos for 3 meals this week, and never tired of them! After those meals we still had enough leftovers that I made a creamy chicken enchilada casserole and froze it for a quick dinner next week! I love how easy this is to make in the crockpot. I'm not usually a big fan of the crockpot because I am away from home for 12 hours a day, and normally anything left in the crockpot that long isn't worth eating! With this recipe, I can easily make it on Sunday, then just heat up what we need for dinner the next day! Perfect for busy moms and working families!




Kelly's Crockpot Creamy Chicken Tacos

Ingredients:
4-6 boneless skinless chicken breasts, thawed*
1 package gluten free taco seasoning (McCormick's is gluten free)
16 ounces salsa
1/2 cup brown minute rice
8-10 ounces sour cream

Directions:
Place chicken breasts in the crockpot, sprinkle with taco seasoning
and pour salsa on top. Cover and turn on low for 6-8 hours or high
for 4-6 hours. One hour before you want to eat it, shred all the
chicken with two forks, add rice and sour cream, stir, cover for the
last hour.

*Carrie's Recipe Notes: When I started the chicken, I also added a can of green chilies in addition to the salsa. In the last hour of cooking, I also added a can of drained and rinsed black beans along with the sour cream and brown rice! We loved these additions! If your kids do not like black beans (but you would like to add them to the recipe) puree the beans in your blender and then stir them into the chicken in the last hour of cooking!

For a printer friendly version, click here.


  • Make sure to visit Gluten Free Kay's blog today for her Kid-Friendly Food Friday Recipe: Honey Caramels! They are gluten free, corn free, egg free, soy free, and VERY kid friendly!! Great job Kay! Thanks so much for contributing your recipe!!



Many thanks to Kelly and Kay for sharing their wonderful recipes with us!

Have a fun weekend!!



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