Busy Night Delight

One of my very favorite things to eat is Tortilla soup.  I can always go for it, anytime of year (OK, maybe I don't crave it when it's 90 and humid but you get the idea).  I love the Pioneer Woman's Tortilla Soup a LOT.  I recommend you try it sometime.  I recently tried a Chicken Posole Stew from a website called Smockityfrocks that was really good as well.  This is really similar to the tortilla soup but instead of black beans, it has a couple of cans of hominy.  If I remember to, next time I'm going to add a can of black beans to this Posole recipe.  The best part about this new recipe is that its all done in the crock pot.  The work to prepare this is minimal.  You could throw it in before work in the morning and leave it on low all day or if you're able to do it in the afternoon, just put it on high for 4 hours.  Click the Smockityfrock link above for the full recipe but I'm going to show you just how incredibly easy this was.

Start with two bone in chicken breasts with the skin removed.  Set them in the bottom of your slow cooker.

Get a couple of cans of chicken broth, or if you're like me, thaw out some broth that you made with those super easy crock pot chickens from 100 Days of Real Food and add it to the crock pot.

OK, so here's the hard part.  You have to slice some carrots.  Yikes.  And a couple of scallions.  Oh boy.
You may need to chop a little garlic, or squish it in the garlic press, but that's it I swear.  The rest involves opening cans and seasonings.

Open a couple of cans of white hominy and rinse it well.

This is basically corn that has been dried and then treated with an alkali process of some kind.  I like how it looks like popcorn.

Next dump in some canned diced tomatoes.

Add your seasonings.  I would like to note here that the recipe calls for Mexican oregano, not sure what that is so I use regular old dried oregano.

After it cooks on high for 4 hrs or low for 7-8, take the chicken out and shred it up by pulling with a couple of forks.

Return the meat back to the stew and get your toppings ready.

I personally feel that avocado or guacamole are critical to any one of the tortilla soup/ posole recipes.  Scallions, cheese, chopped cilantro all all fantastic toppers but for me, avocado is the most important.  I like to serve it with a couple of tortilla chips as well.  Just a few to give it a nice crunch.  So even though it's pretty summery out there, we all have those crazy days when you need a dinner that's ready when you are because there's just no time to deal.  Put this one on your list, it's really good (and much better for you than going to the drive through!). Click Here for the full recipe.