Guest Post: Kate's Nacho Mama’s Chicken Crock Pot Dinner

Hi readers! I have another installment in Kate's freezer to crock pot meals adventure. If you've missed her previous posts, catch up here. Photographer extraordinaire Kate preps 40 meals at once, then freezes them to use in her crock pot later. She's been sharing her thoughts on her first set of recipes in an occasional series.

I have to say that I am *LOVING* this experiment.  I’m so glad I did this.  It was a bit of work in the beginning, but after almost 2 weeks of meals (not repeating even once!), I’m thrilled that I’m still dipping in the freezer to find bags of food we haven’t tried yet.  Seriously – I suspect this is going to become a major part of my family meal set up moving forward.  The time I've saved has been tremendous.

Anyway – on to today’s recipe:


The original name for this recipe* is “Cilantro Lime Chicken," but I have to say – you don’t really taste either the cilantro or the lime in this dish.  You do, however, taste a little spicy kick in the pants that’s pretty decent with some sour cream and served with some tortilla chips.

(* note – the recipe link has several recipes on it.  I only tried the Cilantro Lime Chicken.  If you try any of the others, let me know how it goes!)

I made this with chicken tenders instead of straight up chicken breast as the recipe directs.   I plopped the whole contents  of the bag totally frozen into the crock pot and cooked on low for about 6 hours, but it was probably edible before then. 

With the corn and black beans, this recipe is sufficient to feed about 2-3 people if you add in some vegetables.   Reminder: once again for this “40 meals” crockpot-freezer cooking experiment – buy more chicken than the shopping list advises.  And then buy even more if you plan to feed several adults.

Also note – as mentioned in the tips post, I recommend Ziplock brand gallon size freezer bags.  Most of this experiment was done with Hefty, and I was left with leakages.

Unless cleaning up extra mess, frozen, no less, is your idea of game night, avoid anything that will make your freezer bags messy.  It helps to wipe up the edges of the sealing side of the bag before you store them in your freezer. 

Overall rating: 3.5 out of 5    This was good, but it didn’t knock my socks off overall.  Maybe I’m being a little tough on it.  Maybe it’s a  4 out of 5.  Try it and you be the judge.  Let me know how it goes!

Kate Appelman is a senior portrait and headshot photographer  trying to keep up with two toddlers and keep everyone fed.  Besides photography, Kate spends a lot of time discussing cardboard block architecture and toddler dance moves with her tiny kiddos and trying to fit in a CrossFit workout at least once a week.