I love tacos. If you scroll down, you will find a recipe for Mahi Mahi tacos with a chipotle lime crema. I just can’t get enough tacos — and I have a recipe for almost every taco possible. If you’re in the mood for chicken, I highly recommend this recipe. While they require a little planning ahead since you’re working with the slow cooker, once you have the chicken cooked, putting the tacos together takes about 5 minutes. If you can remember to get the chicken in the slow cooker before heading off to work in the morning, you can come home to an almost instant dinner.

INGREDIENTS

• 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 1 pack taco sized tortillas
• 1 can black beans
• 1 jalepeno
• 2 large tomatoes
• 1 bunch cilantro
• 1 avocado
• 1 cup chicken stock
• Optional: salt and pepper or other spices to taste

Serves: 4-6

Total time: 8 hours in the slow cooker, but only 10 minutes to put together

Step 1 — Get out your Slow Cooker in the Morning

The hardest part about this recipe is to remember to put the chicken breasts in the slow cooker before leaving the house in the morning. I have often had grand plans of making a slow cooker this, or slow cooker that, and had them been thwarted by my morning brain, conditioned on showering and leaving the house as quickly as possible. Solution: put a sticky note on the front door (or garage door — however you leave the house) telling you to cook that chicken!

A note on slow cookers — slow cookers are a great tool to have in the house. You can get cheap ones for about $20 from about anywhere (even most drugstores carry them, especially around the holiday). Every household should have at least one slow cooker. Trust me when I say that you can make much more versatile food in a slow cooker than mushy, salty beef.

Back to the recipe: place the four chicken breasts in the slow cooker, and cover with the 1 cup of chicken stock.

Add water to the slow cooker until the breasts are about halfway submerged. If you want, add salt and pepper or other spices to taste.

I didn’t add any spices, so my chicken was a little bland. I thought the salt in the chicken stock would go farther than it did, so you will probably want to add more salt, pepper and perhaps chili powder at this point in time.

Set the slow cooker to “low”, and cook anywhere from 6 to 9 hours. As long as there’s liquid in the slow cooker, you won’t dry out the chicken. Go to work.

Step 2 — Check out the Chicken

When you get home, take a look at your chicken. It should be cooked, and look something like this:

Turn off the slow cooker. Remove the chicken from your slow cooker, and set on a plate to cool.

Step 3 — Cook your beans

Throw your beans on the stove top, and heat on medium high.

Step 4 — Chop your Toppings

While the chicken is cooling, and your beans are warming up, chop up your tomatoes, avocado bunch of cilantro, and jalepeno (seed and dice it). Throw these ingredients in a bowl and toss. You may want to consider wearing a latex glove while chopping the jalepeno as the oil is quite pernicious. After making this dish (without a glove), I rubbed my eye. Big mistake. The oil got into my contacts, and caused me some serious pain. Just be careful with that jalepeno.

Step 5 — Shred your Chicken 

Using two forks, shred the chicken meat.

Step 6 — Put it all Together

On a plate, take two tortillas, place some chicken on them, and top it with the avocado/tomato mixture. Add some beans. If you like, you can add cheese, too. Enjoy!