Baked Chicken Taquitos

The most popular recipe on my blog has been Crockpot Chicken Tacos for four years running. It's no surprise why when you consider the steps to make it:

1) Add six chicken breasts, one packet of taco seasoning and one jar of salsa into a crockpot and stir to combine.
2) Turn on crockpot for 4-6 hours.
3) Shred with a fork or a hand mixer. Serve.

It makes more chicken than you would've possibly thought you could get out of six chicken breasts, so once you've had your taco fix, you can use the leftovers for soup, quesadillas, salads, crunchwraps, etc.

Super Bowl Sunday calls for delicious food that feeds a crowd. Assuming your crowd isn't full of vegetarians, one batch of crockpot chicken tacos lends itself perfectly to THREE crowd-pleasing variations using the chicken. The first of those is just your standard taco bar with all the fixin's. I usually do this by setting out the chicken and tortillas alongside bowls of sour cream, cheese, tomatoes, avocado/guacamole and salsa. Any variation is good. The more bowls the better.

The second option is what I'll cover in this post -- taquitos! It's hard to beat traditional fried taquitos, but with all the greasy food choices for the Super Bowl, I figured it might be best to give you a baked taquitos recipe. Guilt-free taquito eating to your heart's delight! Also, the next recipe I'm sharing isn't remotely guilt-free, so really I'm really just aiming for balance.

You can serve the taquitos with sour cream, ranch, and/or salsa on the side for dipping. Any of the southwestern/chipotle ranch options are especially good for these. You will need to use the smaller tortillas because otherwise you'll just have very long, awkward taquitos that require double-dipping, and nobody wants that. The pictures show the batch I made using the Mission brand "Super Soft" tortillas because that's what I had on hand, but I'd recommend using just the normal thickness so that they crisp up a bit more.

Check back later today for the next post for chicken nachos!

Enjoy!

Baked Chicken Taquitos
Makes 10 Small Taquitos

1 cup chicken from Crockpot Chicken Tacos *
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
10 small flour tortillas

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. 
2. Line a baking sheet with foil and spray with cooking spray.
3. Stir cheese and chicken together in a bowl.  
4. Set out tortillas, and place a few tablespoons of the mixture in a line on the left 1/3 of the tortilla, leaving about an inch on the ends so the mixture doesn't melt out in the oven. 
5. Roll up the tortilla very tightly, and place seam side down onto the baking sheet. 
6. Repeat with remaining mixture and tortillas, placing tortillas at least an inch apart on the sheet.
7. Spray the top of each tortilla with cooking spray or brush with oil. 
8. Place pan in the oven and cook for 15-20 minutes, or until edges are starting to turn golden brown.
9. Serve immediately with sour cream, ranch and/or salsa.