Do you ever wonder how people's recipes come about? Well for this one I'll satisfy your curiosity. I bought a bottle of buffalo chicken hot sauce ages ago intending to make some buffalo chicken for pizza. And recently I read on Cara’s Cravings how to modify a large slow cooker to make smaller quantities. Mine is a massive beast which always means plenty of leftovers for the freezer. Cara has the same issue I have: sometimes you just want to make smaller quantities. So she came up with this ingenious method of using a smaller ceramic container with a lid INSIDE the larger slow cooker for those times. (She also has a great sounding Buffalo Chicken recipe but I just went simple-chicken, onion, and sauce). I never made the pizza (we ate all the chicken!) but I think this would be good on a pizza but I'm sure you'll see that on Eat Little, Eat Big one day.
So, if you want to try this, just find a smaller dish with a lid that fits inside your slow cooker and slow cook your way to smaller quantities.
This simple recipe turned out really good, that is assuming you like buffalo chicken! It was great on whole grain buns with a thick blue cheese/ranch sauce to help balance the heat. And I loved it over a mixed green salad, again with a dollop of the sauce.
Makes 6 servings, each approximately 183 calories, 2 grams fat, 2 grams carbs, 0.5 grams fiber and 37 grams protein; 4 WW Points+ (plus bun and sauce)
Ingredients:
4 large chicken breasts, cut into large pieces to fit into your container
½ large red onion, coarsely chopped
12 oz. cayenne pepper sauce
Place all ingredients in a ceramic container with a lid and place the container inside your larger slow cooker-don’t add anything around the smaller container (i.e. no water or anything else).
Cook 1 hour on high and 5 hours on low. You could probably do it all on low, I just like getting the chicken to a hot stage quickly. When complete, carefully remove the chicken and shred it and return it to the liquid. The finished liquid was VERY watery so once I removed the chicken to shred, I poured the liquid in a saucepan, boiled it down by half, and then mixed it back in with the chicken.
Blue Cheese/Ranch Sauce; approximately 35 calories, 3 grams fat, .8 grams carbs, 0 fiber, 1.3 grams protein per TBSP; 1 WW Points+
Ingredients:
1 cup low fat sour cream
½ cup crumbled blue cheese
2 TBSP ranch salad dressing mix (dried)
Mix all ingredients together and refrigerate until ready to serve.
So, that's the story of Slow Cooker Buffalo Chicken. What unrelated things have conspired together lately in your kitchen that resulted in a yummy ending?
Printable Recipe
Cara's Cravings (Original Inspiration)
