First recipe of the New Year

I had a wonderful New Year's weekend in Nashville with my best friends, but a part of me was looking forward to today. Yes, even though it meant reentering the real world and the official end of the holidays. After eating and drinking whatever junk I wanted to for the past three days, my body definitely needed to return to a normal operating schedule. So, last night I went grocery shopping and gathered (among other things) the ingredients for my first healthy Crock Pot recipe.... 

Slow Cooker Chicken Tortilla Soup!

I found the original recipe at AllRecipes.com and modified it just a little according to my tastes and what I thought was convenient.

Ingredients:
2 - 5 oz cans of shredded chicken
1 can Rotel tomatoes & chiles (I used original)
1 - 10 oz can enchilada sauce
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced (I subbed 2 tsp prepared minced garlic - the kind in a glass jar)
2 cups water
1 can chicken broth
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp chili powder
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 - 10 oz package of frozen corn
Corn tortillas, vegetable oil, low-fat sour cream, reduced-fat shredded cheddar cheese (to garnish)

The only thing I had to do beforehand was chop the onion. I actually used about 3/4 of it and saved the rest.

The next morning, I assembled the ingredients in the slow cooker in this order:
- Add chicken, tomatoes, enchilada sauce, onion, Rotel, and garlic
- Pour in water and broth
- Season with cumin, chili powder, and pepper
- Stir in corn

Then I set the slow cooker to low and headed to work! So easy. The recipe says to cook the soup on low for 6-8 hours or high for 3-4 hours.

The finishing touch is to brush a few corn tortillas with vegetable oil on both sides, slice them into strips, and bake on a cookie sheet for about 10 minutes. Keep an eye on them so they don't burn! (This is someone else's photo I found on Google, since I forgot to take a picture of mine.)

Top your soup with the tortilla strips and as much sour cream and/or cheese as you'd like. The end result will look like this!

I thought everything tasted delicious. It was definitely spicy, but not too hot for my taste. It also obviously made a ton of soup, so I ended up freezing a container of it and sticking another one in the fridge.

I do plan on making this recipe again, but next time I will probably use whole chicken breasts (just remove them from the Crock Pot and shred them a little before the soup is done), low-sodium chicken broth, and maybe some brown rice. Also, the original recipe calls for 1 tsp of salt and 1 tbsp of cilantro, but I didn't miss either of them. Overall, a great, flavorful but not too heavy dinner for a cold evening.