Easy Crockpot Salsa Chicken

I had an event Saturday and Sunday this weekend and so I didn’t have much extra time to prep my meals for the week. This is a problem, because I am out of my “bulk” food that I usually cook on the weekends and eat throughout the week. So, before I head to bed I just threw one big package of boneless, skinless chicken breasts (I bought a big 5-lb package earlier in the week so it was already in my fridge) into my crockpot and a 16oz jar of salsa on top and two (14.5 oz) cans no-sodium diced tomatoes (don’t drain the juice) and that is it!  Try to find a salsa that doesn’t add any sugar in the ingredient list.  I cut off all the extra fat and tendons off the chicken breasts first before I put it in the crockpot. You can use any kind of salsa, just try to find one that has the lowest amount of sugar (no sugar is ideal, but it is hard to find a salsa without sugar). This only took me about five minutes from start to finish. The longest part was just trimming up the chicken.

Also, I might be weird, but for some reason I hate cutting chicken on my cutting boards. It always seems really hard for me to scrub the chicken residue off and I get paranoid about salmonella. So, one helpful tip that I do is I just trim the chicken in the Styrofoam tray that it comes in. I just pick the breast up when I am trimming it so I don’t cut through the styrofoam. This makes for a super easy clean up because you just throw the entire tray in the trash after you put your chicken in the crock pot, rinse the knife off and put it in the dishwasher, and you are done.

I will probably cook my chicken on low for about 7-8 hours on low (you could also do 3-4 hours on high) and this way it will be ready in the morning to put in my husband’s meals he will take to work with him. I love to use this salsa chicken in burritos with a Food for Life brand rice tortilla.
Here is a picture of what the crockpot salsa chicken looked like after I made it. I cooked it on low for 8 hours. After 8 hours I just ran a fork through it and it all just shredded apart and was really moist. I turned the crock pot off and let the chicken cool a little bit, then put it all in a heavy duty gallon sized ziploc bag and kept it in the fridge to eat for meals during the week.  You can also put this in the freeze to use later in the month.