This 5 ingredient slow cooker salsa chicken and quinoa has the perfect amount of zip to it to, making it truly stand out as a healthy and delicious dinner!
Happy Friday everyone-we’ve made it to Friday, and you know what that means – time for Five Ingredient Fridays. I’m super excited about this weeks’ recipe, it only has 5 ingredients but it has such awesome flavors, I think you’re really going to like it.
Before we talk about the dish and how to make it (hint-it’s incredibly easy) let’s talk about your week. How was it? Are you looking forward to the weekend? I’ve been looking forward to this weekend for a while, because after work today my hubby and I are headed up to Kohler, Wisconsin (you may remember hearing about that from my last trip I took there which you can read more about here ) for a relaxing weekend getaway. One of my sister got my husband and I tickets to see a band play in Kohler, so we planned a little weekend around it. I’m going to be posting more travel stories here on the blog this year based on awesome feedback from my previous travel stories, I have so many things I want to share, now I just need to find some extra hours in the day, please? Mmmk, thanks!
Now with this 5 ingredient slow cooker salsa chicken and quinoa you should know I’m totally using the word ‘zippy,’ because it describes the amazing flavors perfectly. While quinoa can sometimes be bland, that is not the case here. Salsa is used to cook the quinoa and the chicken and gives the dish that extra zip that is sometimes missing. The ingredients I’m using in this recipe are Bob’s Red Mill tricolored quinoa (I’m totally in love with this quinoa, you can purchase it at your local grocery store or on Amazon here) and Frontera brand salsa in jalapeno and cilantro (this salsa is my fave, it’s soooo good! You can purchase it at most grocery stores or here on Amazon.)
To make this you put all the ingredients in your slow cooker (this is the slow cooker I use that I’m totally in love with, and it’s on sale at 46% off on Amazon, so if you don’t have a slow cooker I would totally recommend buying this one) and you set it and forget it – that’s it, told you it was easy!
5 Ingredient Slow Cooker Salsa Chicken and Quinoa
Ingredients
Instructions
Here is a picture of the this chicken and quinoa for healthy meal planning, the turkey meatloaf you see in the picture, that recipe will be coming next week! And if you want other healthy meal planning recipes, check out my recipe for slow cooker beef and sweet potato stew-that one is great for lunches!
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Love this dish Phi, have a great weekend.
Thank you so much Cheri!
Quinoa is a very new ingredient, and we honestly don’t know many ways to put it into use. Your recipe is definitely a great way to do that!:) Delicious idea dear Phi!
As for the weekend, we had some snow here in the north of Athens, mostly in the mountains around the city, it was really cold! We watched the “snowzilla” through webcams and it seemed like a severe blizzard at times (we watched the blizzard from NY and DC livecams, oh the wonders of the Internet!). We can only imagine how much worse it must’ve been in Wisconsin! We hope you coped ok with this. Did you manage to go to Kohler? We now entered the “Alkyonides”, a 10-day sunny and warm period in the middle of the winter and then we expect the next cold weather.
Again, thank you for the amazing recipe!
xoxoxo
Quinoa is a great ingredient, it can be used in place of rice in recipes. It doesn’t really have a lot of flavor on its own, so it’s best if one uses other flavorings (like salsa, or chicken stock) when cooking it.
We didn’t get too much snow here in Wisconsin, surprisingly! Normally we usually get a ton of snow, but this time around we didn’t. And yes, how cool is it (wonders of the internet) that you can view snowstorms via web cams?!
Happy Alkyonides!
Phi
Do you use bone in chicken breast or boneless?
Oh good question Marcia – I usually use boneless chicken breasts, but bone in would be just as delicious!
I love this recipe, will go today to get the quinoa. Thank you for such an easy delicious recipe.
You’re so welcome! This recipe is such a great quick dinner that cooks all day but has minimal ‘hands on’ time. You could also use brown rice in place of quinoa 🙂
Hello! Could I use Greek yogurt instead of cream cheese?
Oh good question! I think you could definitely make that substitution, I would add a little bit more Greek yogurt than I would cream cheese because cream cheese is more concentrated. I’d love to know how it turns out for you!
is there a substitute for cream cheese? we don’t do dairy. thank you
Hi Mimi, the cream cheese just gives it a nice creamy texture, you can either omit it, or use a dairy-free product instead (for example you could use 1/2 cup of almond or soy milk)
Can you use chicken broth instead of water ??
Yes, you definitely could use chicken broth instead of water
Are you able to cook this dish on high for 4 hrs instead?
Yes you definitely could 🙂
This was a family favorite tonight! I used broth & cooked on high for 3h… perfection. We then served it over a bed spinach for some added nutrition! Yum!
That’s so nice to hear Tara, so glad you liked it!!
Just found this and ordered ingredients from Amazon. Will make as soon as they arrive. My question how is this with boneless skinless chicken thighs? Do you use skinless? Do you recommend chicken broth or water?
Hi Joanne, thank you for your comment. This would definitely work with boneless skinless chicken thighs (and yes I’d recommend skinless) and either water or chicken broth would work in this recipe, whatever you have on hand 🙂 Hope you love this recipe!
Can I do 2 cups of quinoa instead of one? And double the water?
Btw I’m so excited for this recipe!
Hope you love this as much as we do 🙂
Yes, you can do 2 cups of quinoa and double the water 🙂