12 Easy Crockpot Chicken Recipes For Delicious Dinners

Sometimes it's just a crockpot day. Whether pressed for time or simply craving that slow-cooked goodness in a warm, bubbling pot, it's one of the best ways of getting delicious home-cooked dinners with one-and-done simplicity. Fortunately, our recipe developers have created a collection of easy crockpot chicken recipes for chefs with any level of expertise. Most approaches call for an upfront dump of ingredients that simmer their way to glory with little intervention on your part.

Among our 12 favorites here, you'll find recipes for slow-cooker Cajun-style gumbo, Italian chicken cacciatore, French coq au vin, Greek lemon orzo, Asian pho, and a wealth of fresh aromatic dinners harboring the likes of sun-dried tomatoes, asparagus, spinach, artichokes, sesame seeds, Alfredo sauce, and so much more. With these crockpot versions of classic dishes, you'll be reinventing tried-and-true recipes and maybe even tossing in your custom touches.

Cooking is all about creating culinary delight in healthy, nourishing ways. It's an ongoing experiment that we do regularly -- so why not make it easy and fun all at once?

Read more: 21 Delicious Ways To Use Up Leftover Rice

Crockpot Butter Chicken

Leading the parade of our easy slow-cooker chicken dinners is a crockpot butter chicken creation from our recipe developer Julianne De Witt. This recipe includes most of the myriad ingredients in classic butter chicken dishes, but notably swaps in heavy cream for the namesake butter, providing that extra-creamy texture we all love in stewed dishes. You'll definitely taste the rich butter-chicken flavors from spices such as garam masala, ginger, paprika, and cumin, all resting in a base of crushed tomatoes, thickened with cornstarch, and garnished with chopped cilantro.

Recipe: Crockpot Butter Chicken

Crockpot Chicken Cacciatore

Lovers of Italian cuisine welcome this crockpot chicken cacciatore recipe with open arms. Rather than hours of invested kitchen time, busy home chefs can whip up a beloved chicken cacciatore dinner with minor hands-on artistry. It still takes some chopping, slicing, and dicing of fresh ingredients, and ideally, a quick sear on the chicken and a sauté of the veggies. But other than that, your slow cooker pretty much takes the reigns. This recipe also makes good use of some dry red wine -- so enjoy the rest of the bottle with special cheers to the Renaissance-era creators of the Italian "Pollo alla Cacciatora."

Recipe: Crockpot Chicken Cacciatore

Crockpot Chicken Gumbo

Gumbo undeniably gets fame-claim from the Cajun and Creole kitchens of Louisiana. It's well-known for the arduous process of creating a defining dark roux to jumpstart the hearty stew. That's why our crockpot chicken gumbo recipe is a delightful surprise. There's no more stress over creating the perfect roux, upon which the entire gumbo typically thrives or dives. Instead, the gumbo builds and thickens inside the slow cooker, along with classic ingredients such as smoky andouille sausages, okra, chicken, and the "holy trinity" of Cajun cuisine: diced celery, onions, and bell peppers.

Recipe: Crockpot Chicken Gumbo

Crockpot Coq Au Vin

Julia Child, who introduced Americans to French cooking in the 1960s, would likely celebrate this easy crockpot coq au vin recipe. After all, her passion was making otherwise complicated dishes accessible to ordinary home chefs. Our recipe developer Julianne De Witt explains that it's an adaptation from what she learned in cooking school, using a slow cooker and pre-cut pieces of chicken rather than a whole bird. She recommends cooking with a French-style "vin" such as pinot noir, noting how the flavor of any wine will ultimately impact the coq au vin.

Recipe: Crockpot Coq Au Vin

Easy Crockpot Sesame Chicken

If you already thought sesame chicken dishes were easy to make, our recipe for crockpot sesame chicken doubles down in a big way. It takes longer to cook, but that's not your worry -- it's the slow cooker's job to get it right. This simple Asian-inspired meal requires only that you place the ingredients in the ceramic pot and turn it on. The base of this recipe is a sweet-and-savory sauce created from honey, sesame oil, soy sauce, and ketchup, which steeps and simmers with other ingredients for immersive flavor intensity.

Recipe: Crockpot Sesame Chicken

Crockpot Greek Lemon Chicken And Orzo

Mediterranean cuisine gets a lot of praise from nutritionists advocating healthy lifestyles -- but does it actually taste good? When it's Greek food and involves a slow cooker, that's a big yes. With this crockpot Greek lemon chicken and orzo recipe, you'll get classic Mediterranean magic in all its glory: lemons, Kalamata olives, sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, oregano, fresh dill, spinach, and feta cheese. It comes together with about 10 minutes of prep time and 2.6 hours on high heat in the crockpot.

Recipe: Crockpot Greek Lemon Chicken and Orzo

Crockpot Spinach And Artichoke Chicken

Artichokes and cream cheese may be unlikely contenders for slow-cooker meals, but this dinner transformer shakes up many preconceptions. Our recipe creator Alexander Roberts shares a crockpot spinach and artichoke chicken recipe inspired by the universally popular spinach artichoke dip. This recipe comes together with 11 everyday ingredients and suggests serving the final dish over penne pasta or steamed rice. Roberts also provides insights on cooking with fresh versus canned artichokes, particularly in this recipe. The whole thing takes just over 4 hours on the high-heat setting, almost all of it hands-off in the slow cooker.

Recipe: Crockpot Spinach and Artichoke Chicken

Creamy Crockpot Lemon Chicken

This shining star of "easy-dinner night" is one of the most aptly named slow-cooker dishes imaginable. Our recipe developer Jessica Morone invented the creamy crockpot lemon chicken recipe using an ordinary, but brilliantly applied, ingredient: cream cheese. Searing the chicken in olive oil is optional, but that extra step locks in flavor and adds texture. After placing the chicken in the slow cooker and pouring in the mixture of other ingredients, you'll strategically place chunks of cream cheese and let them slowly melt into a tangy sauce.

Recipe: Creamy Crockpot Lemon Chicken

Creamy Crockpot Chicken With Sun-Dried Tomatoes And Asparagus

Toss out any assumptions you have about slow-cooker meals, because there's nothing normal about this creamy crockpot chicken with sun-dried tomatoes and asparagus recipe by our recipe developer Taylor Murray. Though hard to imagine, this fancy feast bubbling in your crockpot features everything from roasted cherry tomatoes to saffron, white wine, red chili flakes, paprika, sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, herbs, perky little green peas, and more. Along with the chicken breasts, several ingredients come together in the pot, culminating in an intricately layered, tender gourmet dinner.

Recipe: Creamy Crockpot Chicken With Sun-Dried Tomatoes And Asparagus

Crockpot Chicken Alfredo

The beauty of Italian cooking often lies in elegant simplicity. Well-loved pasta dishes abound far beyond the borders of Italy, leading to this crockpot chicken Alfredo recipe that's both easy and super tasty. The same ingredients of a basic chicken Alfredo apply here, but the sauce gets whisked together directly inside the slow cooker, then the chicken is added, and eventually the pasta and parmesan. Cooking time for this one is a couple of hours on high heat or 3 to 4 hours on the low setting.

Recipe: Crockpot Chicken Alfredo

Crockpot Chicken Fricassee

The culinary term "fricassee" may be French, but that didn't stop an American president, Abraham Lincoln, from reportedly embracing the classic stewy dish. Slow cookers didn't enter the culinary equation until 1971 when the original Crock-Pot brand slow cooker debuted, but there's a good chance Honest Abe would have loved this crockpot chicken fricassee recipe from chef and recipe developer Julianne De Witt. It differs from traditional fricassee dishes in a couple of ways: It does the slow-cooker dance over 3.5 hours for rich flavor complexity, and it incorporates a beurre manié sauce using butter and flour, rather than employing a typical roux.

Recipe: Crockpot Chicken Fricassee

Crockpot Chicken Pho

Traditional Vietnamese pho can require up to 12 hours of cooking time, which is daunting for most chefs -- unless they're using a slow cooker. With this crockpot chicken pho recipe by developer Michelle McGlinn, it's possible to make it in less than half that time in the slow cooker: about 4 to 5 hours on high heat, or from 8 to 9 hours on the low setting. With cloves, star anise, ginger, coriander, fish sauce, palm sugar, onions, and garlic, this is a crockpot dream dish with loads of options for creative toppings.

Recipe: Crockpot Chicken Pho

Read the original article on Tasting Table.