The Thing With the Crockpot

Chicken Taco Soup

For those of us religious jews, crockpots invariably conjure up images of Shabbos (Sabbath) in which we thow a whole bunch of awesome ingredients into a crockpot and cook them together to make Chulent. 

Chulent is a goulash type dish that most Jewish men adore. Many Jewish women adore it too. But here was a kitchen gadget sitting in my tiny kitchen taking up space, unused, for most of the week. 

The thing about Crockpots is that they are no-brainer supper machines. Just put in all the ingredients leave them for a whole bunch of hours and come home to a steamy hot comfort dinner with minimal effort. I have a recipe for slow cooker pulled beef sandwiches that earns a 10+ in Prince Charming's book. It's amazing and super easy. Well, I'm starting school again in a month and the need for easy and yummy no-brainer suppers is rather pressing. So I'm on a quest to find as many good crockpot recipes as I can over the next few weeks. 

The Attempt:

Yesterday I tried a recipe for Chicken Taco Soup that I found on allrecipes.com. I made a couple of changes, naturally. 

1. I swapped out the beer for ginger ale. In my experience ginger ale stands in nicely for beer in most recipes that call for it. We usually don't have beer in our house, but we always have ginger ale. 
2. Swapped out the corn for more vegetables(shredded carrots and mixed peppers). 
• I like more vegetables. In everything.
• Prince Charming doesn't like corn. 

The Verdict:

Eh, Ok. It was good, but lacked oomph. 

• Maybe if I had used actual beer it would have had the oomph factor.

 Also, Charming wasn't a huge fan of the shredded chicken. 

• If I make it again, I'll cut the chicken into chunks, that might be better.

But on the whole, it's a good recipe for every once in a while, but not exactly one that's going to make it into our weekly rotation.