Recipe #1 : Crockpot Italian Chicken and Potatoes

There was a period of time a few years ago, when the kids were around 2 years old where I was desperately searching for new recipes for our family. Obviously as a parent of small children you don't want to spend TONS of time cooking... yet you want to provide wholesome food that is healthy for your family.Now that they're older, I don't mind taking a little more time.. and they love helping out.

Still, this recipe is one we ALL love. The kids aren't a fan of potatoes, so they don't eat those.. but they love the chicken. So I'll serve them some of that with fresh or steamed vegetables.

This recipe takes approximately 15 minutes to prepare, and an additional 6-8 hours for cook time in your crock pot. It is well worth the wait!

There are only SIX ingredients in this recipe. And most of them if not all, you probably already have.

* Boneless, skinless chicken breasts [1-2 pounds, /  2-4 chicken breasts]
* Potatoes [ ANY kind of potatoes will work!]
* Garlic [optional]
* Italian salad dressing - 1/2 cup
* Italian Seasoning-1 tsp
* Black Pepper- 1 tsp

- Of course, feel free to add carrots or any veggies at all that you think would go well, if you would like.

I'm going to start off by saying... I don't even like Italian Salad Dressing. I'll have fat free Italian Dressing on my raw veggies just because it adds a bit of flavor and is fat free... but I don't care for it. So the very idea of having it slathered all over chicken and potatoes immediately turned me off when I first heard about this recipe.

However, the sheer simplicity of it, and desperation for new recipes, made me decide to try it... and I'm so very glad I did.

Okay, so the first thing you do.. is of course thaw your chicken if it's frozen. I keep all of my chicken and meat frozen. You want it to be nice and thawed, to ensure that the cooking time is accurate. If you put it in frozen, it will of course take longer to cook completely. I thaw mine in the microwave... that takes about 8 minutes.

Once your chicken is thawed, throw it in your crock pot.

Next, rinse off your potatoes.

Once the potatoes are rinsed, slice them in half and throw them in the crock pot on top of your chicken.

The next step, is to add the remaining ingredients. The 'correct' amount is 1/2 cup of Italian dressing. .. however, I don't like to follow those amounts. I just pour a rough estimate of what looks good to me, probably about half a cup anyways... lol.. I just don't physically measure things out when I'm at home most of the time, unless it's a new recipe I haven't tried yet.

Next is the ' 1 tsp' of pepper.

And, ' 2 tsp' of Italian Seasoning.

If you're using garlic, chop it up and throw that in there too.

Once you've done that, you are DONE. Does it get any simpler than that?! Definitely not!

Just throw the lid on it, set it for 6-8 hours depending on how much you used, and turn the crock pot on the 'low' setting. Don't forget that last step.... lol... my husband once tried so hard to impress me by making a crock pot meal while I was at work...... and forgot to turn it on. We were all sad. hahah.

Today, I used 3 chicken breasts and the amount of potatoes you see pictured above. I set mine for 7 hours. Remember, you could also add carrots, or anything you want, really. I didn't add veggies because we like our raw veggies. But it's totally up to you!

Remember, when making crock pot meals to refrain from taking off the lid at any point during the cooking process. It can be tempting to take the lid off and to see how your meal is brewing, and to smell the sweet scents.... but it releases all of the heat, and dramatically slows down the cooking process.

Enjoy!!

If you try this, let me know .... did you like it? What, if anything did you change? Or what would you do differently next time? Here tonight we all loved it! [ I intended to take an after picture, but it slipped my mind as we were so busy with homework we  barely took time to eat. :)  ]