Hi everyone! I’m Charla’s daughter, Christi, and I’ve asked her if I could post a recipe review every once in a while. Thanks for letting me join in!

I’ve been trying to eat healthier this year (cliche, I know… but hey, whatever motivation works, right?) and have used a lot of resources to find good recipes. My favorite recipe site is allrecipes.com. I love that you can search by ingredient, but the best feature to me is the reviews. I read quite a few reviews for any recipe I plan to try – many of them offer suggestions for how to improve it, or ways you can change it if you don’t like one thing or another.

The latest recipe we tried is a new fave. I made it this past weekend and am already planning to make it again tomorrow – it’s THAT good, people! Plus, as a bonus, it’s a slow cooker recipe – set it and forget it. Here’s a link to the recipe, and then I’ve listed my modified version below:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Slow-Cooker-Chicken-Taco-Soup/Detail.aspx

SLOW COOKER CHICKEN TACO SOUP

Directions

1. Place the onion, black beans, green chiles, tomato sauce, chicken broth, and diced tomatoes in a slow cooker. Add taco seasoning, and stir to blend. Lay chicken breasts on top of the mixture, pressing down slightly until just covered by the other ingredients. Set slow cooker for low heat, cover, and cook for 5 hours.
2. Remove the lid to your slow cooker and use two forks to shred the chicken breast. Then continue cooking for 2 hours. Serve topped with shredded Cheddar cheese and crushed tortilla chips, if desired.

A couple of notes regarding my changes – first, I can’t stand corn, so I left it out. Most of you will probably want to add that back in. Also, the recipe calls for chili beans – I prefer black beans, so I just used two cans of those instead. We also like things a little spicier, so I added the can of green chiles (it still wasn’t TOO spicy, in our opinion). And the original recipe called for beer, which I a) didn’t have and b) read that it could give the soup a weird taste. I opted for chicken broth, and think that was definitely the right choice. You’ll notice the taco seasoning recipe isn’t included in the recipe on the site – I found that in the first review I read, which happens to be by the author of the original recipe. This taco seasoning is GREAT and we had most of the spices needed for it on hand. We used red pepper flakes that had come with pizza, so save those pepper flakes next time you order Papa John’s! 🙂 Anyway, we plan to try that seasoning recipe next time we make tacos. But I digress… the last change I made to the recipe is leaving out the sour cream. We actually used light sour cream the first time we made it, but felt it didn’t really add anything to the flavor – and who wants extra calories if you don’t need them!

I’d suggest putting the taco seasoning together in a container the night before, and chopping the onion. Then the next morning you can quickly throw everything in the crock pot and be on your way! The aroma alone of this soup is AMAZING. My husband said it kind of reminds him of a southwestern chicken chili, so I guess you could call it that too. It’s got a nice heartiness to it and is pretty filling. The flavor is great – a nice balance of seasoning, not too overpowering or too spicy. Our (very picky) two-year-old ate, and liked, the soup. That alone says a lot!

I hope you’ll give this soup a try and that you’ll love it as much as we did!