Healthy Recipes - Chicken Corn Crock Pot Chili

I started going to the gym at the end of January. We have since gotten in the habit of stopping at a restaurant on our way home because it's usually close to 6pm and I don't want to go home and cook and clean in order to prepare a meal. I have been making healthy choices and going online to my favorite restaurants like Panera Bread (YUM) and planning out what I can eat before I go so that I know how many calories I'm getting. Chick-Fil-A even has a meal calculator you can use, through this I learned that you can actually ask for no butter on your chicken sandwich, saving you 30 calories. I also learned that I do not like their diet lemonade very much. So when we went on Tuesday night I got a half diet/half regular lemonade along with my grilled chicken salad and my meal was 405 calories.

So for Thursday night's gym trip I planned on stopping at Chili's. We haven't been in a while and I LOVE their food. However, I wasn't sure if I could resist the temptation of my favorite treats there. We usually get their yummy Texas Cheese Fries (half order is 1035 calories) and their Crispy Chicken Tacos (1200 calories). After searching the rest of their nutritional info online I really didn't see anything that would work for me, and I knew I wasn't strong enough to resist the lure of cheesy fries dipped in ranch dressing.

Instead of going to Chili's I started searching online for a healthy crock pot recipe that I could fix and have waiting for us when we got home from the gym. The first recipe I found while searching "Healthy Crock Pot Recipes" was a Chicken and Corn Chili on www.recipe.com. The recipe is low-calorie and VERY low-fat as well. Double win!!

Here's what I put into my chili, I tried to buy things that were reduced sodium or no salt added. The College Inn brand broth actually had less sodium than a brand that had "reduced sodium" on the label. We also have a brand of salt that has less salt...lol.



I had some zucchini that needed to be used so I substituted that for the green pepper. That way I kept the green color in there.

My Recipe:
1 Medium Sweet Onion, chopped
1 Pound Boneless, Skinless, Chicken Breast Fillets (they were on sale cheaper than regular boobies, and have all the fat already trimmed off of them)
2 Cups College Inn, Light & Fat Free Chicken Broth
2 Cups of Zucchini, chopped (instead of 1 Green Pepper)
1 Jalapeno chili, seeded and chopped
1 3/4 Tsp Ground Cumin
1/2 Tsp Cayenne Pepper
3/4 Tsp Reduced Sodium Salt
1 can Petite Cut, no salt added, diced tomatoes, drained
1 1/2 cups frozen corn, thawed
1 can Reduced Sodium Black Beans, drained and rinsed
1 can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed

Topped the soup off with a little Mexican shredded cheese and fat free sour cream

The original recipe called for 2 cans of the cannellini beans, which are white pinto beans. I did half and half black and white just to shake up the color a little bit.

The recipe was pretty darned easy to make. I just tossed in all the fresh chopped veggies, chicken, broth, 1/4 tsp of the cayenne and salt, and 1 1/2 tsp of the cumin and cranked it up to high. Because I used the thin chicken fillets, I was able to pull the chicken out after 2 hours and shred it and toss it back in there as opposed to waiting 4 hours with regular chicken boobies.

Along with the shredded chicken I tossed in all the other crap :) The original recipe calls for cornmeal, but I forgot all about that and didn't add it. I turned the crock pot down to Low and it was on that setting for about 3 1/2 more hours for a total cooking time of 5 1/2 hours. I think it's supposed to cook longer but it turned out great.

I used MyFitnessPal to create a recipe for this and set the servings quantity to 6 because I didn't know how much it would make. Based on 6 servings here are the nutritional facts for what I made:

Calories: 234
Total Fat: 1.9g
No saturated or trans fat
Cholesterol: 33.3 mg
Sodium: 990mg
Carbs: 31.9
Dietary Fiber: 8.5g
Sugars: 6.9g
Also has a good amount of protien, vitamin A and C, calcium ,and Iron.

Because I served mine on a yummy pile of Rotini Garden Pasta, which gives you some of your daily serving of veggies, we didn't use very much in a "serving". I only put 3/4 a cup of the chili in my bowl. Hailey had some (she LOVED IT), and Hannah went back for seconds. After all that we still had enough to fill a 7 cup Tupperware container completely full.

So I would go as far as to say that the recipe really makes more like 10 servings, especially since I added 2 full cups of zucchini. This greatly reduces the amount of calories and sodium per serving. So when you make your batch, just make sure to calculate everything properly. I still logged my serving as the one listed above, I figure if it is less calories that's a WIN for me because I was full after eating mine.

I did top it with a pinch of Mexican shredded cheese and a dollop of fat free sour cream. We added a little salt to taste because the recipe really doesn't have much salt in it. Other than that it was wonderful! I personally would have added more fire to the chili, but because I was feeding it to the kids I left it pretty mild. It still had a nice mild burn to it and although my picture doesn't do it justice, it was very colorful.

We served a Dole Southwestern Salad with it which was DELICIOUS!! Normally we'd have a hunk of bread covered in butter with our chili, but the salad was a healthier and much more yummy choice. Hannah couldn't stop raving about the salad! I'm definitely going back to get more while they are buy one get one free at Winn-Dixie.

If you have any low calorie crock pot recipes you have tried and love PLEASE share them with me. If I can make something like this that the kids will enjoy it will make gym nights much easier. I think we will still go once a week out to eat somewhere healthy, but since I'm trying to go to the gym every other day we definitely need to have more crock pot recipes on hand. Luckily since this made SO MUCH, I plan to whip out the shrinky wrap your food machine and freeze some servings for future dinners, we should be able to easily get 3 more meals out of that batch.