Slow Cooker Cream Cheese Salsa Chicken

This is the dinner I make when I’m running on empty and still need something warm on the table. Five ingredients, no browning, no babysitting the stove — the Slow Cooker does all the work while you do literally anything else. It tastes like you tried a lot harder than you actually did, which is exactly the point.

Why You’ll Love It

• Only 5 ingredients — nothing fancy, all pantry-friendly
• No browning or searing — raw Chicken goes straight into the crock
• Shreds itself — two forks and five minutes, done
• Tastes way fancier than the effort it takes — creamy, rich, totally hands-off
• Even better the next day — leftovers hold up beautifully

Ingredient Notes

The chicken breasts: I usually buy the family pack because that’s what’s there, but thighs work too, and honestly thighs are more forgiving if your Slow Cooker runs hot like mine does (I’ve had two crockpots in my life and they behave nothing alike, which nobody warns you about).

Cream cheese: Full-fat, please. I tried the reduced-fat kind exactly once and it never smoothed out right, just sort of sat there being stubborn. Fat-free is worse, don’t bother, it’ll separate on you and you’ll end up with something a little grainy and sad-looking.

Salsa: Use whatever’s already open in your fridge door. I lean medium because my husband thinks “mild” is a personality flaw and my youngest thinks “medium” is basically lava, so medium keeps the peace, more or less.

Taco seasoning: The packet kind is fine, I’m not going to pretend I make my own blend, I don’t have that kind of bandwidth in me most weeks.

Chicken broth: Low sodium, since the taco seasoning already brings plenty of salt to the party.

Ingredients

• 2 to 2 1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 1 (8-ounce) block cream cheese, full-fat, straight from the fridge
• 1 1/2 cups jarred salsa (about that much, I don’t always measure)
• 1 (1-ounce) packet taco seasoning mix
• 1/2 cup low-sodium chicken broth (plus a splash more later, maybe, we’ll see)

Instructions

Lay the raw chicken breasts flat-ish in the bottom of a 4- to 6-quart Slow Cooker. They can overlap a little, nobody’s grading this on presentation.

In a small bowl — whatever’s clean, I use the same cracked one every time, it’s basically the salsa-chicken bowl at this point — whisk together the salsa, the taco seasoning, and the broth. You want the seasoning mixed through, no dry clumps hiding in there.

Pour that over the chicken so it’s mostly coated. Doesn’t have to be perfect.

Now here’s the part I always tell people, because it looks wrong the first time you do it — you take the whole block of cream cheese, unwrapped, and just set it right on top. Don’t stir it in. Don’t cut it up. Just plop it there in the middle like a little iceberg and put the lid on and walk away. I remember the first time I did this I stood there for a solid minute convinced I was ruining dinner. I was not ruining dinner.

Cook on LOW for 4 to 5 hours (or on HIGH for 2 1/2 to 3 hours), until the chicken’s cooked through — you want 165°F in the thickest part if you’re checking with a thermometer, and honestly you should be, I say this as someone who did not always used to check and got lucky more than I probably deserved.

When it’s done, take the lid off and shred the chicken right there in the pot with two forks. The cream cheese will have gone soft and started melting into everything on its own — stir it all together until it’s smooth, no white streaks left. If it looks thicker than you’d like, splash in a little extra warm broth till it loosens up the way you want it.

Taste it. Add a pinch of salt or another spoonful of salsa if it needs brightening — sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t, depends on the salsa you started with, I’ve noticed the jarred stuff varies more than you’d think from brand to brand.

Switch it to WARM and let it sit 10 to 15 minutes before you serve it. The flavors settle in that little window, get friendlier with each other.

What My Kids Do Differently

My daughter stirs in a can of drained black beans and some frozen corn during the last half hour, and I’ll admit it’s good, it just makes it feel like a different dish entirely — more of a taco filling than what I think of as “the chicken.”

My son, who has never met a jalapeño he didn’t want to argue with, throws in pickled ones at the end for heat. I tried doing a whole batch with hot salsa once thinking I’d just meet him halfway and nobody else could eat it, so — lesson learned, keep the heat additions separate and let people doctor their own bowls.

Storage

It keeps in the fridge 3 or 4 days in a covered container, though I’ll admit there was a stretch last winter I left a container of it on the counter overnight by accident — long story, don’t ask, everyone was in the middle of the flu — and had to toss the whole batch, which felt like a personal loss at the time.

Refrigerate it within two hours if you can manage it. Reheats fine on the stove or in the microwave, just add a little broth or milk if it’s gone thick and gluey in the fridge, which it will.

Serving, More or Less

Rice, egg noodles, mashed potatoes — whatever you’ve got that can catch the sauce, because the sauce is really the whole point. Tortillas turn it into something the kids will eat with their hands and call “different” in that tone that means they liked it more than they wanted to admit.

Corn on the side, or green beans, or just a bag salad if that’s where the week has left you. I’ve served this with literally just tortilla chips and called it dinner and nobody complained, so. There’s that option too, if you need it.

I keep meaning to write down whether it was Diane’s recipe or her sister’s — I want to say Diane’s, but there was a version at her sister’s place too that had black beans already in it, so who really knows anymore. Either way it ends up on our table more months than not, and that’s probably review enough.