Crockpot: Cream Cheese Chicken

I've made several crockpot meals lately that I haven't blogged about, usually because I make the meals at the last minute right before work in the morning.
Anyway, I decided to actually take pictures this time and blog about it. I shall try to be better about it in the future, as well.

So I bought a brick of cream cheese the other day and wanted to use it in dinner. Actually, it's Neufchatel cheese, which has less fat, and a much cooler name, so I usually buy it instead of boring old cream cheese.

I knew we had quite a bit of frozen chicken in the basement, so I looked up my favorite recipe website and typed in 'chicken' and 'cream cheese'. Cream Cheese Chicken popped up. Voila!
I began to look around and see what other variations of the recipe I could find. Some of them called for Italian Dressing, and some for Italian Dressing Mix. I had none of the Mix, and the last time I used straight Italian Dressing, my dad said it wasn't his favorite.

I poked around a bit more, and found a recipe for Italian Dressing Mix. Just a bunch of spices thrown together. I didn't have all the spices it called for in pure form, but I substituted Italian Seasoning and hoped for the best.


















After mixing up the seasoning, I turned to the chicken. The chicken was still frozen, but since that usually makes the chicken cook slower, and be more tender, I usually cook it from frozen. I put the frozen chicken pieces in the bottom.



















I sprinkled a few tablespoons on top. Next, I poured four tablespoons of melted butter over it. The recipe called for only two tablespoons, but a bit extra butter is always good.




















The recipe did not call for any water, but I figured if I didn't add water, the seasoning mix would end up baked on the bottom of the crockpot and be terrible to clean off later. I added just enough to cover the bottom of the crockpot and set it to low to cook.

Next, I mixed up one can of cream of chicken soup, an eight ounce package of cream cheese, and half a cup of chicken broth. I made the chicken broth by boiling half a cup of water with half a bouillon cube. Once mixed, I put it in the fridge to be added later.

















I had to go to work, then, so come evening, my mom sauteed the onions and added them, and the chicken soup/cream cheese mixture to the crockpot, after draining out most of the water I'd added earlier.



















I made a pot of rice, waited about 45 minutes for the chicken to be completely done, (you're supposed to wait a full hour, but I was in a hurry, so just turned the crockpot up to high so it would heat up faster.)
I love rice, so much better than noodles. The chicken was poured over the rice, and voila! A delicious meal. :)