Our version of Cafe Rio Shredded Chicken is slow-cooked to perfection with a blend of savory spices perfect for a salad, burrito, quesadilla or enchiladas!

Crockpot Shredded Chicken

Crockpot or slow cooker shredded chicken is an absolute game-changer for busy families and meal preppers alike! It’s super convenient—you just toss the chicken in the crockpot with some delicious seasonings and let it cook low and slow while you go about your day. By the time dinner rolls around, you’ve got perfectly tender, juicy chicken that practically shreds itself.

It’s incredibly versatile, too! Use it for tacos, salads, quesadillas, wraps, burritos—the possibilities are endless. If you meal prep, this chicken is great to portion and keep in the fridge for up to 5 days. It also freezes really well and can be frozen for up to 3 months!

This recipe is inspired by one of our favorite local favorite restaurants – Cafe Rio! The seasonings on the chicken give it SO much flavor and it always turns out super moist. You have got to give it a try!

Ingredients for Cafe Rio Shredded Chicken

• Boneless Skinless Chicken. A lot of people want to know what cut of chicken is best for shredding. Boneless skinless chicken breasts and thighs are your best bet. Chicken breasts are leaner and shred easily, making them perfect for lighter dishes like salads and wraps. Chicken thighs are slightly fattier, giving a richer, juicier shredded chicken that’s fantastic for tacos, casseroles, and hearty soups. Both cuts cook beautifully in the crockpot, and so it really is just your preference!
• White Vinegar. The acidity of the vinegar helps to break down the chicken fibers, making the meat extra tender and juicy. It also adds a subtle tanginess that brightens up the overall flavor profile of the chicken without overpowering the other ingredients.
• Zesty Italian Dressing (dry). This seasoning mix is packed with herbs, spices, and a tangy kick that permeates the chicken as it cooks, creating a savory, well-seasoned dish. The combination of garlic, onion, red pepper flakes, and Italian herbs like oregano and basil gives the chicken a complex and delicious taste that can elevate simple shredded chicken into something extraordinary. It’s a convenient, all-in-one seasoning that saves you time from measuring out all of the ingredients!
• Dry Ranch Dressing Mix. Ranch dressing mix combines the flavors of buttermilk, garlic, onion, dill, and parsley that adds a creamy, herby flavor that everyone loves.

How to Make Crockpot Shredded Chicken Cafe Rio Style

There are just 3 simple steps to make this chicken!

1. In a medium mixing bowl, mix vinegar, oil, zesty Italian seasoning packet, chili powder, cumin, and dry ranch seasoning.
2. Spray the inside of your slow cooker with cooking spray and then add the chicken. Pour the dressing mixture over the top.
3. Cover and cook on high for 4 hours. When it is done, shred the chicken with a fork.

Tips for Shredding Chicken

An easy hack for shredding chicken is to cool the chicken slightly after it is cooked. Put the chicken into a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer. Use a hand mixer or stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment to shred the chicken. Start on low speed and gradually increase to medium-high speed. The chicken will shred quickly and evenly within a minute or two!

If you are wondering whether it is better to shred meat when its hot or cold, the answer is that its best to do it when its warm. It is harder to handle it while it’s scorching hot, but it doesn’t shred as easily when its cold. Allow it to cool slightly until it’s comfortable to handle, then proceed with shredding for best results.

How to Make Cafe Rio Salad with Chicken

We love this chicken for lots of recipes, but our very favorite is Cafe Rio Salad! We like to layer:

Then layer:

• Lettuce
• Pico or salsa
• Guacamole
• Cotja Cheese
• Cilantro Ranch Dressing
• Lime
• Tortilla Strips
• Fresh cilantro

Such a filling and delicious meal! Every time I make this, everyone in my family loves it!

Recipes We Love Adding This Chicken To

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Perfect for busy parents looking to make their own baby food, my easy zucchini baby food with apples and carrots is a delicious combination your baby will love! Both zucchini and carrots are sweeter veggies, and when paired with apples, it turns a simple zucchini puree into a healthy sweet treat for your little one.

Veggies mixed with fruit are always a hit in my household, and this zucchini carrot and apple puree is a favorite. When my kids were young, I used to mix this zucchini baby food with their oatmeal in the morning and they loved it!

While you can easily take zucchini and make a one ingredient puree, I always loved experimenting with different zucchini combination baby food to see what my baby enjoyed most. I find that mixing it with a couple of other fruits and veggies makes babies love it even more!

So if you haven’t tried making a zucchini carrot puree for your little one, my simple recipe is easy to prepare, nutritious, and delicious. I guarantee you will have one happy baby after giving them this smooth puree!

Latest Recipe Video!

🥘 Ingredients

My homemade baby puree with zucchini is ready in minutes with minimal effort. All you need is a handful of simple ingredients and a good blender! Scroll down to the recipe card at the bottom of the post for more details.

Organic Zucchini: This mild flavored veggie forms the base of my zucchini carrot baby food! I prefer to use the smaller, skinnier zucchini for baby food because they have fewer seeds. You could also make this recipe with yellow squash or summer squash if you don’t have zucchini.

Organic Carrots: They add sweetness and a smooth texture to the puree. You can use either large carrots or baby carrots.

Organic Fuji Apples: I love using Fuji apples for their sweet and crisp flavor. They are excellent for baby food puree as they easily cook down and add natural sweetness.

Water: You need liquid to help the fruits and veggies cook down. I use 12 ounces of water so that the puree ends up with a smooth and easy-to-consume consistency.

🔪 How To Make Zucchini Baby Food

Learning how to puree zucchini for baby food is really easy! It only takes a few simple steps and the blender does all the hard work for you.

Watch my video below to see the step-by-step process of making zucchini puree for baby.

Prep Your Ingredients: To begin I wash all the produce. Then I cut the zucchini in half lengthwise and cut each half into 8 pieces. Next, I peel the carrots, cut them in half lengthwise, and then cut each half into 8 pieces. For the apples, I cut them in half, remove the seeds and stem, and cut each half into 8 pieces.

Cook The Produce: In a large pot, I add the carrots and water. Then I turn the heat to high and cook for 8 minutes, stirring occasionally. Next, I add the zucchini and apples and cook for another 3-5 minutes.

Puree The Mixture: When done I pour the cooked produce and water into a blender. Then I blend everything until smooth or the desired consistency.

Serve or Store: After blending, if I’m not serving the pureeright away or using it all within a week, I pour it into ice cube trays. Then I let it cool, wrap or cover the trays, and put them in the freezer. 

Note: Thaw in the fridge the night before use, or thaw by putting the small cubes in a bowl over a bowl of hot water on the counter to defrost.

✔️ How To Choose Zucchini

Zucchini, also known as courgette in some countries, is the exact same vegetable. When selecting zucchini, you want to look for vibrant, bright green ones that are firm and free of bruises or blemishes.

Size is important too. I prefer smaller, skinnier zucchini for baby food because they have fewer seeds in the center. Choose small to medium-sized zucchini, as they have less water content and more flavor compared to larger ones. Larger zucchinis tend to be watery, less flavorful, and full of seeds.

📖 Variations

One of the best things about this recipe is how customizable it is. When creating your own variations choosing what to mix with zucchini for baby food is fun. Here are some of my favorite zucchini baby food combinations:

Use Different Veggies: This is just a short list of some other vegetables that would taste great with my zucchini puree.

Change The Fruit: Use a different type of apple in this delicious puree, or add one of these other fruits for a fun way to change things up!

Add Spices Or Herbs: All zucchini puree combinations for baby are delicious with the addition of herbs and spices such as basil, thyme, rosemary, parsley, garlic, or lemon. If you want a sweeter flavor, try a pinch of cinnamon or nutmeg. It’s a great way to expose babies to new flavors. 

Add Breast Milk or Formula: When considering what to mix zucchini with for baby, it can be as simple as just mixing in some breast milk or organic baby formula to thin out the consistency of the puree right before serving. Do not add breastmilk or formula before freezing the baby food as formula is not meant to be frozen, and breastmilk has a different shelf life in the freezer.

Make A Single Ingredient Puree: If you don’t have everything on hand to make carrot zucchini and apple puree, no problem! You can make plain zucchini puree! Just add the zucchini and a few tablespoons of water to a pot, boil, and then puree. Keep in mind that zucchini has a lot of water, so if you don’t add the carrots and apples, you may need less water.

Make Baby Finger Foods: Turn my courgette puree for baby recipe into finger food instead. For older babies, or babies who are using baby led weaning foods, you can cut the zucchini into match-sized sticks, and roast them in the oven with a little bit of olive oil. They turn into zucchini “fries” and are a great way for your baby to experiment with gumming soft foods.

🧊 Storage Directions

Fridge: If you plan to use the entire batch of zucchini baby puree within a week, I recommend just transferring it to an airtight container and storing it in the refrigerator. Simply scoop out individual servings as needed. 

Freezer: For longer storage, pour the cooled puree into ice cube trays, cover, and freeze until solid. Once frozen, I always transfer the cubes to a ziplock freezer bag and label it with the date. The cubes can be stored in the freezer for up to 3 months. 

Thawing: To thaw, I normally place the desired number of cubes in the fridge overnight. Alternatively, for quicker thawing, you can place the cubes in a bowl over another bowl of hot water on the counter. 

Reheating: Gently warm the thawed puree in a saucepan over low heat or in a microwave-safe dish in the microwave. Stir well and test the temperature before serving to ensure it’s not too hot for your baby.

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📋 Recipe Card

Too many marriages are failing today and even trained marriage counselors don’t know why. I have been a marriage and family therapist for more than fifty years and the headline on my website “Confessions of a Twice-Divorced Marriage Counselor” introduces you to what I’ve learned in my own life and what I have done to help thousands of men and women recognize that divorce is not the answer. Spoiler alert: My present wife Carlin and I have been married for 45 years now and our love grows stronger every year.

            I could write a lot and tell you the full story, but I’m guessing you’d appreciate my getting right to the point and telling you what the time bomb is and the secret for defusing it.

            The hidden bomb causes changes in our brains when we grow up with a “father wound” and the secret for defusing it is to change the false beliefs that were planted in our brains that undermine our relationships.

            Although this deadly time bomb can explode at any time in a marriage, mid-life couples are particularly vulnerable. Susan L. Brown is Director of The National Center for Family & Marriage Research. In a recent article, “The Graying of Divorce: A Half Century of Change,” she offers the following facts:

• People over 50 are divorcing in record-breaking numbers, and three to four-family generations feel the effects.

• 1 in 4 persons who divorce in the U.S. is over 50, contrasted to less than

1 in 10 in 1990.

• As the divorce rate for adults over 50 soars, so does the number of adult children experiencing parental divorce.

• In their book Second Chances: Men, Women and Children a Decade After Divorce, Sandra Blakeslee and Judith S. Wallerstein tell us, “Divorce is deceptive. Legally it is a single event, but psychologically it is a chain – sometimes a never-ending chain – of events, relocations, and radically shifting relationships strung through time, a process that forever changes the lives of the people involved.”

Understanding and Healing The Family Father Wound

            Although I had written a number of books that helped me understand what causes relationships to fall apart, including international best-sellers including Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places, Surviving Male Menopause, The Irritable Male Syndrome, and The Enlightened Marriage: The 5 Transformative Stages of Relationships and Why the Best is Still to Come, it wasn’t until I tackled the “father wound” that the final pieces of the puzzle fell into place.

            In my book, My Distant Dad: Healing the Family Father Wound, I say,

“There is one problem that surpasses all others in its impact on men, women, and society. It is the father wound. We focus on the importance of mothers in determining the well-being of children. Without the support of their fathers, men become disconnected from their true selves, feeling that others are controlling their lives. The father wound may be the most pervasive, most important, and least recognized problem facing men and their families today. The father wound isn’t restricted to men. Women also suffer from the father wound.”

            As I recount in the book, my father wound began early. Like many men, my mid-life father had become increasingly depressed when he couldn’t make a living to support his family. Although there were many system problems that led to his losing his job, he blamed himself and felt like he was a failure as a husband and a father. When I was five years old, he took an overdose of sleeping pills.

            Fortunately, he didn’t die. He was committed to the state mental hospital, where the “treatment” of the time was inadequate at best and his condition worsened. I grew up wondering what happened to my father, when it would happen to me, and what I could do to prevent it from happening to other families.

            According to the National Center for Fathering,

“More than 20 million children live in a home without the physical presence of a father. Millions more have dads who are physically present, but emotionally absent. If it were classified as a disease, fatherlessness would be an epidemic worthy of attention as a national emergency.”

            I grew up believing that there was something wrong with me, that somehow I was responsible for my father’s depression and suicide attempt. We now know that “Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)” including the loss of parental support can impact our brain chemistry and the ways we perceive ourselves and our world.

            As I was writing the book, My Distant Dad, I thought I had healed my own father wound and could now share what I learned with others. One of those who found my book helpful was Iyanla Vanzant, the world-renowned spiritual teacher and thought leader, and host of Iyanla Fix My Life on the Oprah Winfrey Network. She said,

“Millions of us grew in a home with a father who was distant, absent, rejecting, or dysfunctional. Jed Diamond’s magnificent healing journey offers us a story of hope, reconciliation, and redemption where we can finally come to peace with our father wound and find real lasting love in our lives.”

            It wasn’t until the book was nearly complete that I realized there was another father wound that was missing. I knew my mother’s father, John, had died when she was five years old (the same age I was when my father went into the mental hospital, but she never talked about when happened or how it impacted her life.

            The wound she never dealt with caused her to marry and divorce three times. I believe, like many, she was “looking for love in all the wrong places,” always searching for the father she had lost, but never realizing it. Like many women she had an unhealthy emotional attachment to me, her son, and was never able to have a successful, long-term marriage.”

            I realized that all the women I had loved the most had suffered from having a father wound: My first wife’s father died when she was seven years old. My second wife’s father couldn’t handle her developing womanhood and totally distanced from her when she moved into puberty. Even my present wife, Carlin, lost her father through divorce.

            Whether you’re a man or a woman I think we all can resonate with the words of fatherhood expert Roland Warren. “Kids have a hole in their soul in the shape of their dad. And if a father is unwilling or unable to fill that role, it can leave a wound that is not easily healed.”

            Of course the healing and defusing of the bomb takes time. I have developed a program that I use with my private clients. You can learn about it and get the course here.

            There is another course that is excellent called “How to Diffuse the Divorce Bomb,” developed by Steve Horsmon, founder of Good Guys to Great Men. You can check out that course here.

            I write a new article every week for those who are part of our MenAlive community. If you are not a subscriber, you can become one here.