Crockpot chicken tortilla soup

Ingredients:

1 pound chicken breast or tenders

15 oz. can rotel

10 oz. can enchilada sauce

1 medium onion, chopped

4 oz. can chopped green chile peppers

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 cups water

14.5 oz. can chicken broth

1 teaspoon cumin

1 teaspoon chili powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 bay leaf

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

10 oz. package frozen corn

1 tablespoon chopped cilantro

Vegetable oil

7 corn tortillas

Place chicken, tomatoes, enchilada sauce, onion, green chiles, and garlic into a slow cooker. Pour in water and chicken broth, and season with cumin, chili powder, salt, pepper, and bay leaf.  Stir in corn and cilantro. Cover and cook on low setting for 6 to 8 hours or on high setting for 3 to 4 hours.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Lightly brush both sides of tortillas with oil. Cut tortillas into strips, and then spread on a baking sheet.  Bake in preheated oven until crisp, about 10 to 15 minutes.

When soup is done, shred the chicken breasts with a fork.  Sprinkle tortilla strips over soup. Garnish with avocado if desired.

Summer made this for soup night and actually didn’t use tortillas.  It was still awesome! Just more of a broth based soup.  Also, if you don’t like heat, cut the cayenne pepper and replace the can of rotel with a can of diced tomatoes! Add some black beans! Another tweak, use all chicken broth instead of the 2 cups of water.  

Southwestern Cheeseball

Ingredients:

8 oz shredded sharp cheddar cheese

8 oz cream cheese, at room temperature

2 tablespoons butter, at room temperature

¼ cup finely diced onion

¼ teaspoon garlic powder

4 oz can chopped green chilies

chopped cilantro

crackers, for serving

In a medium bowl, combine the cheddar, cream cheese, butter, onion, garlic powder and green chilies. Mix completely.  Turn out onto a piece of plastic wrap. Form into a ball and wrap tightly. Refrigerate until set up, 2 hours to overnight.  Place chopped cilantro on a plate. Unwrap cheeseball and roll in the cilantro until coated. Serve with crackers.

First of all, I left this as a dip and added the cilantro instead of rolling in it.  I found the original recipe to be a bit blah so I added 2 Tbsp of ranch dressing, a few dashes of hot sauce and half a diced jalapeno.  

Tortilla Roll Ups

1 package of large flour tortillas (about 16)

1 cup grated cheddar cheese

1 package taco seasoning

1 small can chopped black olives (optional)

1 small can chopped green chilies

8 ounces cream cheese, softened

24 ounces sour cream (I used 16 oz regular and 8 oz Mexican flavor sour cream)

Few dashes of hot sauce

In a large bowl, mix the cream cheese and sour cream until it is smooth and there are no lumps. Add the taco seasoning and mix well. Add the cheese, olives and chilies and mix. Spread the mixture on the tortillas to the edges and roll up. Store in the refrigerator until firm. Cut up and serve.

The flavor of these is good but they are a bit messy. Next time I would do 16 oz cream cheese and 16 oz of sour cream.