All over social media I’ve seen so many different ways to make crack chicken popping up. There has been low carb recipes, crack chicken casserole, instant pot crack chicken recipes, crack chicken for the keto diet – you name it someone’s made a version of it. This easy recipe is one the whole family will love!

The problem with traditional crack chicken is it packs over 700 calories for an itsy bitsy serving which isn’t great when you are trying to stick to a low calorie diet. The inspiration for this great recipe came from Zach Coen, a registered Dietician who creates macro friendly recipes. While his version of this recipe is great I find that it packs on a few too many calories for my liking and isn’t as filling as it could be. I’ve made some alterations to get this creamy dish a bit lower calorie and more satiating.

WHY YOU’LL LOVE THIS CRACK CHICKEN RECIPE

This easy dinner gets thrown in the slow cooker for super easy cooking!

Slow cooker chicken produces delicious chicken every time

The entire family will announce this is their new favorite recipe

Can be meal prepped – just store in airtight containers in the fridge

SIMPLE INGREDIENTS

Chicken Breast – Traditionally creamy crack chicken calls for boneless skinless chicken thighs but since were cutting down the calories we’ll use breast. Don’t worry because we’re cooking them in a slow cooker so it’ll be juicy chicken.

Cream Cheese – I use reduced fat cream cheese in this recipe, if you don’t mind the extra calories you can use full-fat cream cheese instead.

Salt & Black Pepper

Paprika – If you don’t love paprika you can skip it.

Garlic Powder – If you don’t have garlic powder you can use onion powder instead. I didn’t see the difference when I added both so to keep this recipe simple I’m only using garlic powder.

Bacon Bits – I use bacon bits because I always have them on hand, you could alternatively use cooked bacon. Go for crispy bacon and crumple it.

Fat Free Shredded Cheddar Cheese – I use fat free shredded cheese but you could also use full fat or reduced fat.

Pasta – I’m using barilla protein plus pasta in this recipe. You can use regular pasta or banza chick pea pasta instead.

Buffalo Sauce– I use buffalo sauce instead of hot sauce, it adds more calories but split into 5 servings it’s negligible.

Green onions – as optional garnish

HOW TO MAKE THE BEST SLOW COOKER CRACK CHICKEN RECIPE

Start by cutting your chicken into cubes, season with salt, black pepper, paprika and garlic powder.

Place chicken on the bottom of the slow cooker and cover with cream cheese (cut into blocks).

Set your cook time to 4 hours and the heat to the LOW setting, cover and let cook.

Once cooked remove the lid and stir to combine the chicken cream cheese mixture.

Top with Bacon bits and shredded cheese. Cover.

Bring a large saucepan of water to a boil, add in pasta and cook as directed. strain,

Add pasta and buffalo sauce to crock pot crack chicken and give it another mix. Turn off slow cooker and serve.

EQUIPTMENT YOU’LL NEED

Slow Cooker / Crock Pot – Definitely don’t try to use a pressure cooker. If you don’t have a slow cooker you can cook this in your oven. low and slow is going to be the name of the game – Shoot for the lowest temperature setting you can, throw the chicken and cream cheese into a casserole dish and cook for several hours check on it every hour until the chicken is cooked. Another alternative is you could just use rotisserie chicken or leftover shredded chicken. Add it into a casserole dish and bake, I would recommend adding a little bit of chicken broth to add in some moisture you won’t get if you aren’t slow cooking.

A Saucepan – to cook your pasta!

WHAT ARE THE CALORIES / MACROS?

I knew with some tweaking I could make this a low calorie meal that fit everyone’s calorie budgets. The recipe I based this off of used a Greek yogurt / cream cheese mixture, less chicken, more pasta and different spices.

Here’s how I altered the recipe:

Chicken – I’ve found the best way to make this delicious meal is to up the chicken – This will give you more protein and cuts down the calories with a bit less pasta.

Reduced Fat Cream Cheese – For the life of me I could not find the greek yogurt / cream cheese mixture used in the original recipe and I’m all for ingredient accessibility. If I can’t find it easily, that means you can’t either. Nobody has time to be searching 7 grocery store on busy weeknights. I used less than what the original recipe called for. In testing the extra cream cheese didn’t yield a better result, just higher calories.

Pasta – I use less pasta, I’ve found that when I eat a larger serving of pasta I’m hungry again pretty quickly so we’ve upped the chicken and lowered the pasta.

The original version of this recipe was around 500 calories a serving.

Our version of this easy meal is only 401 calories with better macros and lower fat!

MACROS: 34.4 grams of carbs, 9.7 grams of fat, 46 grams of protein.

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