Well friends, if you follow along on Instagram you know I’m having a whole week of slow cooker meals. I looked ahead and knew that having dinner done would be the best way to go this week and I’ve really enjoyed perfecting some recipes. So far we’ve learned that French onion soup is best done on the stovetop, duh, and that throwing meatballs in the slow cooker with some sauce can yes, still be considered a slow cooker meal.

Yesterday I took to improving on and developing my own slow cooker chicken tortilla soup recipe. I love that this is a great recipe for a healthy dinner with the additional of a can of black beans, or two, fresh corn, or canned, and all the seasonings my whole family really loved it.

The Details

From the get go I knew this recipe was possibly going to be a winner, and it was. You get most of the flavor from your enchilada sauce and salsa which I love. It’s a great shortcut method and something you can easily customize based on what your family likes. I really like the red enchilada sauce from Trader Joes. Salsa verde is such an underrated ingredient I think. There are really so many good uses for it from enchiladas to soup like this.

With the use of these flavor powerhouses you really have no need for things like taco seasoning, which I avoid those packets anyways. You could easily add garlic powder or a little chili powder to the chicken if you’d like. What I did was season it with some salt and cumin after adding to the slow cooker.

All the Toppings

My kids and husband may have loved this for all the toppings we had. Everyone gets to pick their favorite toppings and this made the meal toddler approved too. There’s the crunchy tortilla strips, fresh cilantro, sour cream and cheese. We love hot sauce in our family and I know a few added that as well. This really is a winner of a crock pot chicken tortilla soup!

The Chicken

Speaking of the chicken, I like to buy frozen raw chicken tenders from Costco. I end up having those on hand all the time and find it’s cheaper that constantly buying fresh. In this case I took out 2 lbs of chicken tenders, but chicken breast or even skinless chicken thighs would work as well. Before serving you’ll want to remove the chicken from the slow cooker, shred it and return it to the pot.

As it cooks down the chicken really shrinks up. I used 2 lbs here but could my slow cooker, 8 quarts!, have held it I could have added more. For this easy chicken tortilla soup recipe I wanted it to be budget friendly as well so I added beans and corn to offer more protein, fiber, and vegetables. Bell peppers would have been a good addition here too!

A few more notes

This is a great slow cooker recipe for a cold winter night, but I could see loving it during any season to be honest! You can play around with things as I find a recipe like this really can’t go wrong. Stick with the basics, great enchilada sauce, salsa verde and delicious chicken stock for the base. Enjoy the broth and all those toppings!

If for some reason I didn’t have enchilada sauce but I wanted to make this, I’d use fire-roasted tomatoes of other diced tomatoes in its place. The thing with this delicious meal is you want to aim for the best chicken tortilla soup and not be getting a chili! So, keeping the shredded chicken ratio to broth recipe is really key!

You could easily use pinto beans over black beans and sweet corn when it’s in season. I really hope you enjoy this on busy days!

I hope your family loves this for dinner time as much as mine did. I cooked everything on low for 7 hours but I could see how this would be a great dump and go recipe for lunch after church. In that case I’d cook things on high for 4-6 hours. I love that my slow cooker has a delay start function as well. If the chicken was super cold I could see delaying the start a little, but likely not since my slow cooker ends up turning to “keep warm” when all is done.

Ok, thanks for reading this whole post. Time to add this to your shopping list and meal plan for the week and let me know what you think!