Cheesy Chicken, Bacon & Tater Tot Crock Pot Bake

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When I asked my husband to pick a few recipes from my "Stuff I Need to Cook" board for the next week's menu, he jumped all over this one right away.  It has all this delicious man-friendly stuff in it after all - including bacon - did I really think he'd pick a salad or tofu or quiona dish? Look at all that delicious melty goodness.  Who could possibly resist?

This is a super-easy crock pot recipe.  I love crock recipes in general, because I"m more of a morning person.  By the time dinner time rolls around, half the time I don't feel like doing a lot of work for dinner. Of course, this doesn't require a lot of work whether you're a morning person or not, it goes together in less than ten minutes.  And that included grating all the cheese - if you buy pre-grated, you're in for a remarkable lack of prep time.

In my crock pot, just starting the melty-ness

I did make a couple of discoveries on preparing this dish.  First, directions indicate that you should grease the bottom of the crock pot.  I usually use Pam spray in the crock, so gave it a nice thorough spraying and went on with the directions.

Do not do this.

I'm serious here, I lost most of the bottom of the food and a lot on the sides.  It became hard, dark brown, and utterly and completely fossilized. Pam spray is not a friend to this recipe at all.

Secondly, for me this was a little bland.  I think it's probably designed that way, but I like more interesting food, with more color and life to it.  I would suggest (and I'm planning on doing this next time) adding a layer of veggies to the center.  Family favourites around here include bell peppers and zucchini so I'll probably add something along those lines, but just about anything you like would do. I would imagine that spinach, onions, peas, and any kind of squash would work very well in this dish.

On the other hand, if you make a few veggie sides, the starchiness and cheesiness of this may be cut down by that.  I served it with a green salad, which didn't seem to be enough to counter the heaviness of the dish, when it's primarily cheesy potatoes!

Overall, this was super easy and fast to make, which made me interested in it again.  It would be especially handy for hectic days.  With a few small modifications, I think this would be a fantastic addition to any recipe repertoire! Thumbs-up on this dish.