Featured comment
Made this for dinner and it was SO delish! Especially love the flavor and texture of the cilantro Pesto! Will be making on repeat!
In This Post
Watch How To Make These Chicken Bowls
I’m Going On Six Weeks Straight Of Making These.
Huge props to these crockpot chicken bowls for helping me eat more protein during the week, and for actually tasting so darn good, and for reheating well (you know how reheated chicken can be sometimes).
They’re a combination of yellow rice, saucy shredded chicken, pickled onions, greens, and that cilantro pesto on top, and it’s a flavor and color delight.
I keep trying to NOT write up a recipe for it, because bowl “recipes” are just annoying, ya know? Lots of little parts, lots of components… but you guys keep asking about them, and I keep coming back to them, so let’s make this happen.
The game plan: make these 4 things.
- Crockpot chicken.
- Yellow rice.
- Pickled onions.
- That cilantro pesto I keep talking about.
(Everything you need is in the recipe below.)
I usually throw a little salad on there, either some pre-made bagged salad, or lately a handful of micro greens from Costco!
But the beautiful thing is that prepped chicken, rice, pickled onions, and green sauce are building blocks for all kinds of other deliciousness. So, double whammy. Two for one. You’re your own professional chef right now.
In our family of four, I typically make the amounts as listed for one family dinner + 1-2 lunches of the leftovers for me. And I really do look forward to those leftovers a lot.
Wishing you a week of great eating!
With two adults and two young kids, this amount will get us through one family dinner + 2 lunch leftover servings for me! Double these amounts if you want to feed a big family for dinner and/or have lots of leftovers!
Print
Crockpot Chicken Bowls with Yellow Rice and Cilantro Pesto
- Total Time: 3 hours 20 minutes
- Yield: 4–5 servings 1x
Description
Ingredients
Crockpot Chicken:
- 1 lb. chicken breasts
- 8 ounces of a simmer sauce or enchilada sauce that you like (see notes for my recs)
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch whisked into 1–2 tablespoons water
- extra seasoning to taste – I often add a few shakes of chipotle powder, salt, and pepper
Yellow Rice:
- 1 cup white rice
- 1 1/2 cups water
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
- 1/8 teaspoon turmeric
Cilantro Pesto
- 1 1/2 cups cilantro leaves
- 1/2 jalapeño, ribs and seeds removed
- 1 clove garlic
- juice and zest of 1 lime
- 1/4 cup olive oil or avocado oil
- 1/2 cup roasted salted pistachios
Other stuff for the bowl:
- Pickled onions (a must for me, every time)
- Sour cream and/or your favorite salsa (see notes)
- A salad mix
Instructions
- For the Crockpot Chicken: Put the chicken in a slow cooker and cover with sauce; cook for 2 1/2 – 3 hours on high. Shred chicken directly in the slow cooker. Add the cornstarch slurry to thicken the sauce. Season to taste.
- For the Rice: Rinse the rice in a fine mesh colander. Add the rice, water, butter, salt, chili powder, and turmeric to a small saucepan. Bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and cook for 15 minutes. Remove the cover, fluff it up, and season to taste.
- For the Cilantro Pesto: Blend everything up in a small chopper or food processor until smooth-ish (I leave some texture in mine)! It’ll be a very thick sauce, which I love – you can add water as desired to thin it out.
- Build Your Bowls: I love the combination of the yellow rice with a scoop of chicken, some salad greens, pickled onions, and a dollop of that cilantro pesto on top!
Notes
Favorite simmer sauces: I love Frontera’s Red Chile Sauce, Somos Al Pastor Sauce, and Siete Enchilada Sauce.
Favorite salsas: Thank you for asking – my favorite salsa, which I am passionate about right now, is the Siete Casera Mild Salsa Roja. It’s smoky and delicious and mild enough for my kids to love it, too. I also love the Mateo’s Salsa.
For meal prep: Store components separately so you can reheat the chicken and rice, while keeping the sauce, pickled onions, and salad greens cold, crispy, and fresh.
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Cook Time: 3 hours
- Category: Dinner
- Method: Crockpot
- Cuisine: Mexican-Inspired
Keywords: chicken bowls, crockpot chicken, slow cooker chicken, rice bowl
This tastes amazing. I just made it tonight and everything came together perfectly. I made everything exactly as directed. You must try it!
I have been loving your recipes! I just found. you about 2 months ago and my family has loved your recipes. OUr go to’s are the air fryer chicken thighs, aioli sauce, stacked sweet potatoes, the best chocolate chip cookies, and now the Salmon with Aji verde sauce!
I was wondering if you have a nut free pesto sauce recipe that I could replace for this one?
Thanks!!
You could use our Cilantro Vinaigrette instead!
Lindsay, babe, this is for sure a winner winner chicken dinner. I got all the high fives. The cilantro pesto, whaaat omg I’m so glad I listened to other reviewers that suggested doubling that. I concur with you that pickled onions are a must. I doubled the recipe so we could eat it for a couple of days. Good thing! I’m sure it’ll be a regular meal in my house.
This sounds amazing. Can’t wait to try. What nut could be a substitute for the pistachios? (I have some walnuts or pecans that I could swap, but open to all suggestions!!)
Either would be great!
Made these last night, I tried cooking my 1.5 pounds of chicken, (2 big chicken breasts) in the instant pot with the sauce for 10 minutes on the chicken setting and then let it naturally release for 25 minutes. My chicken was way overcooked! I’ll try manually releasing quicker next time and see if that helps. Despite the dry chicken, I shredded and chopped it and with the sauce and other ingredients, the bowls turned out delicious! I added avocado, and even my four and six-year-old loved them! Used a bit of baby spinach at the bottom instead of salad greens. Will def make again!
Any one made this without using nuts in the pesto? I’ve got a kid with nut allergy and not sure how or what to replace it with?
Let’s talk about this cilantro/pistachio pesto. What a delightful flavor bomb. It immediately elevates this simple chicken preparation to fancy restaurant quality. Wow!
WOW. This was delicious! Such a flavorful, healthy, yet filling bowl. Whole family approved and SO easy to make.
Tasty recipe, I would recommend a different enchilada sauce or make your own. I used the Siete brand (one of the recommended ones) and the chicken did not have much flavor. Everything else was great though!
I make this almost weekly. SO so good and especially great when you use tortilla chips to scoop everything up.
This was so good!
I used a can of old el paso enchilada sauce since we like it and that’s what I had in my pantry. I’m not a red onion fan, so I skipped the pickled onions. I was worried that might make it taste like it was missing an acidic element, but the cilantro pesto added that back in and it was perfect! I think next time I might use a southwest salad kit or make some sort of southwest slaw to use as the salad. We really liked it as is though!
I made this today and it was a HIT! I even sent it to my best friends so they can try it now. The pickled onions really MADE this dish!
Can I make the chicken over the stove top without a crockpot? If so how?
Honestly a fantastic meal! I tripled the recipe in order to prep 15 lunches for the week for 3 people, and I am in love with all the different flavors, especially the pesto. For the preps, I also included some low-fat sour cream and homemade fresh salsa, which work together beautifully. Will definitely be putting this on the regular meal prep rotation!
Perfect for a January Sunday where motivate to cook was low but we still wanted to eat something healthy.
A few things I did:
1. Used half a jar of Enchilada sauce from Trader Joe’s + added half a white onion and full red pepper sliced thin in crockpot with the chicken
2. Used pre-cooked white rice from TJ’s freezer section to make yellow rice – cooked in the mic then stirred in butter and spices
3. Served bowls with pesto as directed + refried beans we had left over!
Overall, LOVED THIS RECIPE
This was a 5 star dinner for my family, including two teenagers. (Substituted panko for the pistachios in the pesto due to allergies and it was great.)
Delicious! I used what I had on hand to put this together. For the pesto, I subbed raw almonds for the pistachios then added salt and used lemon instead lime. For the chicken, I blended a chipotle tomatillo salsa and added pepper, chicken bouillon and a 1/2 Tbl of sugar. My bowl had avocado, cotija cheese, fresh corn kernals and roasted peppers.
Could the rice be done using a rice cooker? Would ratios change or r Ed main the same?
We haven’t tested using a rice cooker!
Holy cow this was SO good!! That cilantro pesto is phenomenal. Such an interesting flavor profile I would never have tried but it was delightful. Will definitely make again!! You never steer me wrong 🙂
This one is definitely being added to my list of go-to dinners. Not only was it so easy to throw all together, the flavors were incredible!
this was delicious, and great for meal prep. I made it on the stove instead of the crockpot. I made a side of dried black beans too.
This was fantastic! The cilantro pesto was extra delicious (and im not someone who usually loves cilantro). Will absolutely make again
This looks delicious! Like all your recipes! Where did you get your little dressing blender?
This was incredible. The pesto and chicken and greens combo was AMAZING – texture queen, Lindsay.
Molly
This was delicious! My family ate it up. The cilantro pesto was the star. I also made your pickled onions which were so good and easy to make. Thank you for the recipes!