Tequila Lime Crockpot Chicken

This Tequila Lime Crockpot Chicken was an experiment.  I took a grilled chicken recipe I found on Annie’s Eats Blog and turned it into a crockpot recipe that I think turned out really good!

Tequila Lime Crockpot Chicken

1/4 cup tequila
1/2 cup freshly squeezed lime juice
1/4 cup freshly squeeze orange juice
1 tsp. chili powder
1 jalapeno pepper, ribbed, seeded and minced
2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed through a garlic press
1 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 tsp. black pepper
3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

What I learned while make the marinade is I REALLY need a lime squeezer (hint, hint Christmas is right around the corner! :).  It took 8 small limes to get the 1/2 cup of lime juice.  I cheated on the orange juice and just used Simply orange.  Despite only using 1/4 cup of tequila….my marinade smelled just like a margarita once I had it all mixed.

I followed the instructions on the blog for the marinade and let my chicken sit in the marinade over night, then tossed it all in the crockpot.  Since I don’t have a food processor, once again I used my little Cook’s blender I normally reserve for Shakeology to mince the garlic and the jalapeno and it worked great.

Annie’s recipe called for only 2 chicken breasts but the pack I bought had 3 in it so I went ahead and used them all and there was plenty of marinade for the extra chicken breast and figured why not go ahead and make an extra meal for the week.

I cooked the chicken for 8 hours on low and then ended up leaving it in the crockpot on warm for a couple more hours and the chicken didn’t dry out at all.

Included in Annie’s post she provides a recipe for black beans.  I decided to give those a try as well and followed her recipe with the exception of adding fajita seasoning (because I don’t have any) and corn to the beans and they were delicious.  Instead of the fajita seasoning I just did some garlic salt.  I’m not sure if it was the chicken with a little spicy kick or the black beans, or both?  But the beans were excellent as well!

I haven’t reheated this meal yet, but it will be my lunch today and I’m assuming like other crockpot recipes this chicken will reheat great!

As best I can tell, even though Tequila was used in this recipe, the Tequila Lime Crockpot Chicken is technically clean because you cook the bad stuff out of the tequila.