Pulled Chicken Quesadilla

This recipe is inspired by my mom's pulled pork made in the slow cooker. She throws a pork loin (or shoulder) in the slow cooker with some barbeque sauce and pineapple juice for the whole day and makes the house smell like barbeque. Eventually my dad can't wait any more opens the slow cooker and starts the slow process of burning the pork... oops. Luckily, we almost always save it.

Anyway, let's make this a little healthier and replace that pork with some chicken. So, here's what we start with in the morning.

We've got some barbeque sauce, onion, cumin (comino in Spanish), garlic, poblano and chicken breasts.

Slice the onion, dice the garlic and poblano (really finely please, this needs to be the first thing to cook through so that the result isn't too spicy). Put them all in the slow cooker along with some cumin, salt and pepper. Toss them all up while you're at it.

 

Now, add in the barbeque sauce (about three quarters of the container) and some apple cider vinegar and mix it up. Then, put your chicken breasts on top and flip them over a few times to coat with the sauce you made. Plug in your slow cooker and set it to low for 5 hours.

So, if you wanted to use pork instead of chicken, I would replace half of the apple cider vinegar with pineapple juice, it complements the flavor of the pork better. Also, if you're making this for more people (I made it with two breasts, serving about 4) I would use 4 breasts and use the whole bottle of barbeque sauce and the same amount of vinegar. You don't need that much more liquid for the additional food, that's the beauty of the slow cooker. Oh yeah, and if you really like smoke flavor, either use a smoke flavored barbeque sauce, or add in about a teaspoon of liquid smoke. A little liquid smoke goes a REALLY long way. It smells so good though.

So, five hours pass. Now, it's time to take two forks out and go to town on the chicken. Just tear at it with the two forks until it's basically decimated. Take three or four ladle-fulls of the liquid (and beautiful onions and peppers) from the slow cooker and mix it in to the chicken. Yum.

So, now place a tortilla in a dry non-stick pan over medium heat and pile on enough cheese to just cover the tortilla. Put pulled chicken on half of it and fold the tortilla over. Let the tortilla brown for about two minutes, then flip and let that side brown. Remove to a pan.

The result it not too messy, unless you're a fan of overstuffed quesadillas like I am.

We served these babies with delicious Mexican Sour Cream Rice, and you can find that recipe here: Mexican Sour Cream Rice.

Here's the recipe for the quesadillas.

Pulled Chicken Quesadillas

2 Chicken Breasts

1 3/4 cups Barbeque Sauce

1/2 cup Apple Cider Vinegar

1 1/2 or 2 tsp Ground Cumin

1 medium Onion, sliced

2 cloves Garlic

1/4 cup (about) Poblano Pepper, diced

4 Tortillas

1 cup Monterrey Jack Cheese

Salt and Pepper to taste

1. Combine onion, garlic, peppers, along with cumin, salt and pepper in the slow cooker.

2. Add in vinegar, barbeque sauce and chicken breasts, comibine them so that the breasts are coated in sauce.

3. Let cook on low setting for 5 hours.

4. Shred chicken with two forks and add in some of the sauce (with onion and peppers) from the slow cooker.

5. Place tortilla in a dry, non-stick pan over medium heat and add a layer of cheese. Let melt and then add on the chicken. Fold in half and let brown on both sides. Remove from pan.