Creamy Slow Cooker Chicken (Low Carb)

This is a wonderful dish if you want to produce a wonderful dinner, but you don’t have a lot of time, if that is, you do a little bit of forward planning. You can just throw everything into the slow cooker in the morning and, when you return home you have an amazing dinner.  

While you could serve this with rice (which would up your carb intake), in the summer, it would be nice with a salad. In the winter, some steamed vegetables.  I personally love it with creamy cauliflower mash and sliced green beans or peas (higher carbs than beans).

This recipe serves eight! So why did I make it so large? Simply because I want to cut down my workload.  This dish freezes beautifully so you make two meals for the effort of one!  I love that.  You could even freeze this into single serving so that you could take it work for lunch.

Chicken Breast

While I chop the chicken breast into 5cm(ish) chunks, if you’re in a hurry you can certainly skip this step.  I just think it makes it easier at the end when you shred the chicken, to have smaller pieces to deal with.  I also think that the flavour is better when it’s chopped first.

Chicken Stock

You can either use store bought chicken stock or you can make your own using my recipe. (insert link https://www.livingareallife.com/posts/homemade-stock)You will note that I have put ¾ to a cup of chicken stock in the ingredients below.  My slow cooker tends to make a lot of steam and therefore sometimes a whole cup could be a little too much.  In the image below, I added a whole cup and it was a little on the runny side. I’d go for the whole cup the first time you make the recipe and adjust it next time if you feel the mixture is too runny.

Cream Cheese

I use Philadelphia Cream Cheese for two reasons – first, it’s exactly the right amount for this recipe, and second, it’s firmer than most other cream cheeses. Having said that, you can use whatever cream cheese you wish.

I heat the chicken stock and the cream cheese in the microwave and give it a good mix prior to putting it into the slow cooker.  I feel that this gives abetter end result as the cheese disperses better.  This step is entirely optional – if you’re in a hurry just bung it all in.

Flavouring

This recipe uses garlic and onion powder, chopped fresh garlic and chopped fresh parsley. I know this seems like a lot of garlic, but I don’t think you would want to reduce this.  You could substitute these for other flavourings if you don’t like onion and garlic.  Perhaps a herbier mixture instead.

I know that my measurement of parsley below(one bunch) is a little vague.  You need to aim for about four tablespoons of chopped parsley. I put the garlic and the parsley in a mini chopper and chop them together.  

Recipe

Ingredients:

4 chicken breasts

¾-1 cup of chicken stock

250g Philadelphia cream cheese

2 teaspoons garlic powder

2 teaspoons onion powder

6 cloves garlic

2 bunches of fresh parsley (around 4tablespoons chopped)

1½ teaspoons salt

1½ teaspoons freshly ground black pepper

Juice of half a lemon

Method:

Chop the chicken (optional – see above) and put it into the slow cooker.

Put the cream cheese and chicken stock into a microwave safe bowl and heat until the cheese starts to melt.  Give it a good whisk with a fork. This step is entirely optional – see above.

Add the rest of the ingredients.

Cook for 6-8 hours on low or 4-6 hours on high.  Shred the chicken with a fork.

Serve with cauliflower mash and green sliced beans or peas.

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