Overall rating: 5 out of 5 stars
I picked this recipe for two reasons: I needed to make dinner in my crockpot because I knew my schedule was crazy, and I had 93% of the ingredients on hand.
Typically, a big hesitation for me when cooking healthy food is that a lot of it isn’t food I would regularly have on hand, but Gina Homolka of Skinnytaste is great about creating recipes with pantry staples.
This recipe calls for some leg work to be done before everything goes in the crockpot, which I took care of the night before. This made throwing everything into the pot before work a 5 minutes process. As much as I love cooking, I’m happy with any weeknight recipe that has only about 20 minutes of active prep time.
One of my favorite things about cooking in a Crockpot is that when you let it cook all day while you’re gone, you are guaranteed to be welcomed home by an amazing smell. This recipe more than delivered on that promise.
Overly excited about the smell, I dove in and burned my tongue. My first impression of the soup, other than the burning sensation, was that it was full-flavored and delicious, but it was more like a vegetable soup with chicken than a chicken enchilada soup. That all changed when I added the sour cream, cheese, and scallions. It’s amazing was three simple ingredients can do to change the entire flavor profile. The mixed in sour cream also gave it a slightly creamy flavor, which was very comforting.
In addition to testing out a recipe I’m guaranteed to make again, I got the base for a delicious vegetable soup. I’ll play around with some idea and get back to you with a recipe.
Recipe modifications**:
- Left out the beans because I hate beans (it’s a texture thing)
- Left out the cilantro because I think it tastes like soap (it’s a genetic thing)
- Used canned corn because it’s all I had
- Added a bell pepper because it was going to go to waste if I hadn’t
- Cooked it in the crockpot on low or 10+ hours because I have a job and my boyfriend was late coming over for dinner
*MMM = Make More Monday – a weekly recipe or recipe review
**I realize that modifications can skew the results of a recipe, but the only modification I made that I think could have changed the flavor significantly was my omission of cilantro. If I had made this recipe and felt it was missing something, I would opt for parsley next time because it’s much less offensive to my taste buds. Also, I could be wrong about the beans not changing the flavor, but I have no real idea what beans taste like because I can’t get passed the texture. Bottom line on beans: I’m not going to cook them into any recipe, ever. If the extra cooking time did anything, it made it more flavorful.
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