Slow Cooker Chicken Taco Soup

Daniel loves the tortilla soup that is served at Max & Erma's and it has become my mission to try to duplicate it as close as I possibly can. I have also been wanting to use my crock pot more often seeing as most nights I don't feel like standing in the kitchen whipping something up. I found this recipe on my favorite site yet again and boy is it delicious.

Ingredients:
1 onion, chopped
1 (16 ounce) can chili beans
1 (15 ounce) can black beans
1 (15 ounce) can whole kernel corn, drained
1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce
1 (12 fluid ounce) can or bottle beer
2 (10 ounce) cans diced tomatoes with green chilies, undrained
1 (1.25 ounce) package taco seasoning
3 whole skinless, boneless chicken breasts
shredded Cheddar cheese (optional)
sour cream (optional)
crushed tortilla chips (optional)

Directions:

1.) Place the onion, chili beans, black beans, corn, tomato sauce, beer, 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 chicken breasts from the soup, and allow to cool long enough to be handled. Stir the shredded chicken back into the soup, and continue cooking for 2 hours. Serve topped with shredded Cheddar cheese, a dollop of sour cream, and crushed tortilla chips, if desired.

This soup did have a bit of a kick to it and the only thing I can think of is that it was the diced tomatoes with the green chilies. Now if you are like myself and prefer things without that kick in the back of your throat you can substitute that particular ingredient with just regular diced tomatoes. Another option is that instead of using the chicken breasts, I used chicken tenders, they cooked up much quicker.

Stay tuned for a new recipe tomorrow. We are celebrarting my Dad's birthday which was on April 18th, I couldn't make that celebration so I am throwing him a belated birthday dinner. Our family loves fajitas and just about anything served between two slices of bread so when I stumbled upon this recipe on Allrecipes I knew that I would have to try it out on them.

*I seem to be having problems with the template on my blog so I had to switch to this plain jane one. I will working on getting the blog back on the pretty side of things this evening.