Crock Pot Enchilada Orzo

It’s the end of the summer and it’s still hot in New York. Too hot to turn on my regular oven. This is why I own more than 1 slow cooker (and am looking to purchase an InstaPot by the end of the year). I happened to stumble upon this recipe while searching for something new to make in my Crock Pot. I’m typically not much of an orzo fan, however, the cheesy goodness of enchiladas is enough to make me say yes to almost anything. I tweaked the recipe a bit (as you’ll see below) but feel free to switch it up however you choose!

Ingredients:
1 (14.5 ounce) can fire roasted diced tomatoes
1 (10 ounce) can Old El Paso medium enchilada sauce (feel free to switch to mild if medium packs too much of a punch for you)
1 (4.5 ounce) can Old El Paso chopped green chiles, drained
1/2 cup vegetable broth, plus more, as needed (we’ll get to that later, but I had 2 cups ready to go total)
1 cup corn kernels, frozen, canned, or roasted (I used canned, if you do the same make sure you drain them!)
1 cup canned black beans, drained and rinsed
Ground sea salt & ground black pepper, to taste
4 ounces cream cheese, cubed
2 cups uncooked orzo pasta

Place diced tomatoes, enchilada sauce, green chiles, 1/2 cup vegetable broth, corn, and black beans into a slow cooker; season with S&P, to taste. Stir until well combined. Top with cream cheese (the cream cheese does NOT need to be mixed in. It will melt as everything cooks up and you will fully incorporate it later).
Cover and cook on either low for 7-8 hours or high for 3-4 hours (I did high).
Uncover and stir until cream cheese is well combined. Stir in orzo. Stir in additional vegetable broth until desired consistency is achieved (I ended up using about 1.5 more cups so it wasn’t so thick). Cover and cook on HIGH heat for 15-30 minutes (15 did the trick for me).
Serve immediately and transfer any leftovers to a casserole dish (it will begin to stick to the sides of the slow cooker otherwise).

What this baby looked like prior to adding the orzo 4 hours later.

All finished and quickly transferred to a casserole dish so I wouldn’t be spending hours scrubbing my Crock Pot.

Yum!

This came out insanely cheesy (much like my sense of humor). Even with the additional broth, it still remained a bit thick but that was just fine with me. Make sure you don’t overcook once the orzo is added or you’ll have some mushy pasta (and who really likes that?!). This is guaranteed to taste even better as leftovers, which allows everything more time to come together and pack more of a flavor punch. The chiles and fire roasted tomatoes can make this pretty spicy so if you can’t handle heat, then I suggest substituting with something else.