Shredded Beef Tacos: Crock Pot Delight

I love Mexican food. Anytime I see a recipe for Mexican food, I am likely to pin it, especially if it looks easy.

Yesterday, I decided to try a brand new pin (I usually go with older pins first), slow cooker shredded beef tacos. My type of recipe, Mexican and slow cooker. It ended up tasting good, but there are a few things I will tweak in the future.

The first thing you need to do is create a rub out of 2 tsp. chili powder, 1 tsp cumin, and 1/2 tsp smoked paprika. I subbed regular paprika for the smoked version because that was all I had on hand. Then you are supposed to rub the spice mixture all over 2 lbs of beef, in my case a chuck roast. 

Notice the large jar of garlic? Yep. That is my shortcut.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I didn't feel that the rub was enough to get over all the meat. If there is a technique I'm missing, please let me know. The rub I had made was only enough to go on one side...barely. So, I mixed up some more rub. The next time I do this recipe I plan on tripling the rub so that I have plenty of rub to cover the meat. I'd much rather end up with a bit extra than scrambling to make more. (If you triple, you would need 2 Tbsp chili powder, 1 Tbsp cumin, and 1 1/2 tsp paprika.)

Once the rub is applied, heat up 2 Tbsp of olive oil in a skillet and sear the meat on each side. Searing should only take 1-2 minutes per side. Put the meat in the bottom of you slow cooker. Add your minced onion (1 small) and minced garlic (4 cloves) on top of the meat.

The food in the crock pot ready to go.

You will then add 1 cup of beef broth or stock to the skillet, deglazing the pan. Add 2 Tbsp of tomato paste to help thicken the broth and 1 tsp of chipolte powder. The pinned recipe says to add a chopped chipolte pepper into the recipe. I did not do that and instead went with her substituted suggestion of the powder. However, the 1/2 tsp did not give the beef much flavor or kick so if going with the powder, I would add the full teaspoon.

The beef all shredded and ready to serve.

Once the sauce has thickened, after 3-5 minutes, pour it on top of the meat in the crock pot. Cover the crock pot and cook on low for 6-8 hours. After it is done cooking, take out the meat with a slotted spoon. Shred the meat and serve with flour tortillas (or if you prefer, corn) and all the fixings. Another thing you can do is use the meat to make beef quesadillas.

We really did like this dish. I just want to add a bit more kick and flavor to it in the future. One thought was that I might add cayenne pepper to the rub or even include the chipolte powder in the rub. 

Ready to eat! (The quesadilla was made for my toddler.)

Shredded beef tacos with all the fixings!

Another successful pin! 

My Tiny Dancer

My toddler loves to dance. She danced long before she was able to walk, much less crawl. As soon as she was able to sit up, whenever she heard music, she would bounce to the music.

I take great joy in the fact that she loves music and loves to dance. It brings a smile to my face every time the music motivates her to move. I long ago resolved that as soon as she is old enough I will get her started with dance lessons. Since the majority of places require that your child be at least 3, we have another year of waiting. Until she can start lessons, though, I encourage her dancing.

Ginny usually will start dancing the moment she hears music. Some mornings she will wake up and the first word out of her lips is "dance?" as she points out the radio in her room. Dancing is a daily enterprise for my little girl.

Recently, Dancing With The Stars started their new season. It has been a favorite of mine for a long time. We introduced Ginny to the show for the first time on premiere night. Ginny's bedtime had been 7 p.m until a few weeks ago when we changed it to 7:30 so she had never seen the show before. Ginny was completely enamored. She was more than happy to dance along with the show until she had to go to bed. Last night, I resolved that I can no longer watch DWTS live. Ginny loves the show so much, I feel like it is unfair to only let her watch the first 30 minutes. So, starting last night, I have started DVRing it so she and I can watch the show together the next day. The side benefit of this for me is that I don't have to watch Disney, Jr.

Country Club Chicken: A Little Bite of Heaven

The finished product, ready to serve!

One recipe I found on Pinterest has become a quick favorite in our home, Country Club Chicken. The first time I made it was when my parents were visiting. They fell in love with it. They asked me to email the recipe to them, and reminded me when they were on the road home back to Florida.

Last night, I made it for a second time. Making it was more of a challenge this time around. After all, last time I had 3 additional adults to help keep my children distracted as I made dinner. This time I just had my DH who was holding our napping baby, who is seriously resistant to napping anywhere except our arms. My lovely and energetic toddler took advantage of this situation by staying as close to me as possible, getting seriously underfoot. So, as I prepped, I felt my blood pressure rise. Not the ideal situation for cooking much of anything. However, I did what I could.

This recipe does require a bit of prep work. Unfortunately, instead of paying attention to the cooking description given by Kayote Kitchen (see the link above), I just printed out the printable version and went from there. If I had gone over her actual instructions, I wouldn't have gotten the wrong type of mushrooms. Instead, I looked at the ingredient list and and when I saw 7 oz of mushrooms, I assumed she meant canned. She did not. I had forgotten this from the first time I made it. Seeing as I didn't have any fresh mushrooms on hand, I ended up using canned instead. Lesson learned: read all of the recipe before shopping for ingredients.

The sauteed onions, canned mushrooms (but fresh is best),
apples, and bacon with the soup being added.

Anyhow, to get started you need to mince 1 large onion and 1 apple (Golden Delicious works well), as well as clean and slice your mushrooms. The first time I did the recipe, I used pre-sliced mushrooms from the grocery store, 8 oz instead of the 7 oz she has in her recipe. Not a huge change in the least. Besides, more mushrooms is not a bad thing. While you are prepping these ingredients, you will need to fry 4-5 slices of bacon, then cut it into smaller pieces. Now, the first time I did this, my bacon was bad so I used real bacon bits/pieces. It actually worked nicely in the recipe, although fresh is usually best.

Once the bacon is done, put a couple of tablespoons of unsalted butter in the pan to melt. Then, brown the about 4 seasoned (salt & pepper) chicken breast. Basically, you want it to look brown on the outside, but not be cooked on the inside. After that is done, you put the chicken in a casserole, and add the onion to the pan. I won't go into a lot of detail here, because you can get it more in depth on her page. When the onion, mushrooms, and apple is done cooking you will be adding cream of mushroom soup as well as white wine and the bacon. Kayote Kitchen mentions using Unox soup. I've never heard of that brand nor is there any chance that my small town grocery store (nor our nearby small city one) would carry it. I used her suggested substitute (2 cans of Campbell's), and it worked great. The last thing you add is sharp cheddar. Her pictures show her adding white cheddar. I used yellow sharp cheddar. Stir the ingredients well then pour the sauce on top of the chicken.

Ready to go in the oven!

You will then put the casserole in a 350 oven. Of course, I had to remove my toddler who had crawled between my legs and blocked my oven access. I removed her to a laundry basket she had dragged into the kitchen. Once that was done, I let the chicken cook for 30 minutes.

My toddler in the laundry basket after having to
remove her from blocking the oven.

This recipe goes great with pasta (spaghetti was suggested, but we use penne because that works best for toddler fingers). I would also think it would work with rice.

Another successful pin from Pinterest, and one I highly recommend! :)