Chicken and Salsa

Do you buy frozen chicken but never know how to cook it?  Are you tired of just throwing it in the oven or frying it on the stove?  Or do you even just put it in the microwave because you're THAT lazy?  Well, let me introduce you to the slow cooker (or crock pot)  It may be the easiest thing to use in the entire kitchen.  You put all of your ingredients together, turn it on and when you get home from work, or wake up the next morning, or recover from your hangover, your meal is done.

Slow cookers can range from 30-100 dollars, so if you don't want to spend that on something you use in your kitchen, do what I did and ask for one for Christmas.  Your Mom will think you're all grown up and she'll be happy to get that for you as well as all the PS3 games you've been asking for, too.  Anyway, the slow cooker is the easy way to cook a lot of meals and I'll be using (especially Chili) so I recommend purchasing one.

This meal is easy.  It takes frozen chicken and salsa, combines them and wa-la...your dinner is finished.

 

That's all you need.  And who said delicious meals couldn't be easy?

Fill up your crock-pot with frozen chicken (about 1/2 to 3/4 of the bag) and place it in the slow cooker like this:

 

Then take the salsa and pour it over the chicken, like this:

Do not worry if the salsa is not evenly distributed among the chicken as the salsa is going to thin out.  Take the empty salsa jar and add fill it up with water about 1/4th of the way.  Close the lid and shake it up to get all the extra salsa into the water.  Then, pour that water over the chicken

I realize that pictures are probably not needed to put three ingredients in a pot and push a button, but hey, we like to make things here at GrubDaddy as easy as possible.  Place the top over the slow cooker, set to a low heat, or if your slow cooker is done by hours, use the 8 or 10 hour setting.  Then do something for 8-10 hours:  Shoot hoops, clean your room, go to work, drink a beer, watch TV, call your girlfriend, I don't care, there's just no need to be in the kitchen.
After 8-10 hours, come back to the sweet smell of chicken and salsa permeating throughout your kitchen and it should smell delicious.

 Take the slow cooker and dump everything (chicken and salsa) into a bowl.

There should be a lot of excess salsa and that's OK.  The chicken is very tender right now, but when you come back for leftovers (because there will be leftovers) the chicken will stay very tender in the salsa.  Then when you need to re-heat the chicken, cut the chicken into thinner strips and nuke it with some of the salsa and it'll taste exactly like it did when you took it out of the slow cooker.

Another thing I like to do with this chicken is to take a fork and mash it up and break it apart until it looks like this:

Pour a very small amount of salsa on top of it and you have just made your own chicken salad (except it has a salsa base instead of a mayo base)  Place it on some bread, put a piece of cheese on it and presto, you have an easy sandwich to take to work for lunch.

If you are impressing your lady friend with this meal, I would suggest a nice cool White Riesling Wine to offset a little bit of the kick the salsa adds to the chicken.  If you're eating it by yourself however, I would suggest a nice refreshing Blue Moon as a light and simple meal deserves a light and simple (yet tasty) beer.

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