One of the easiest cold weather weeknight dinner recipes you can make! Slow Cooker Cranberry Chicken that’s gluten-free, allergy-free, and paleo! Just 3 ingredients in the crockpot and you’ll have a family with happy healthy bellies at dinnertime!

If you don’t know how to or you hate to cook (shame!), but you still have mouths to feed and you care about your health, then the slow cooker is YOUR lifesaver! I didn’t bring a slow cooker down to school with me, but the oven if just fine! However, all you lucky ducks in fully equipped homes and kitchens, I better see a slow cooker on your kitchen counter weekly this winter!

Slow cookers take zero skill to use. Just dump and GO! Then a few hours later, magically out comes some intensely flavor-infused nourishment! For this recipe, I chose to use New Jersey’s famous cranberries for just the perfect cold weather dinner. Cranberries = November and December for me. The last few years I’ve been buying some extra bags of fresh cranberries and storing them in the freezer for later in the year and for meals like this!

But let’s back up here. You know I never give you all a recipe without some sort of backstory to either the dish or a specific ingredient. For this one, we’re going to be talking about the cranberry and my love/hate journey with it. For the longest time, as a wee young girl, the 3 foods I HATED were mushrooms, stuffing, and cranberries (in any form). From cranberry jelly to cranberry juice, I hated everything about them. So sour and “icky” tasting.

My brother LOVED the canned cranberry jelly you’d serve at Thanksgiving or with any big turkey/chicken dinner. He also loved cranberry juice (cocktail..so actually just sugar). He used to snack on bags of craisins too, I’d rather stick to raisins. My o my, do we all know that most childhood tastes change with time. Seeing that I love mushrooms and stuffing…and am rather fond of some fancy cranberry creations. I’m not sure when the switch happened, but I started loving snacking on craisins and drinking 100% cranberry juice with a splash of seltzer for my own little fruity bubbly cocktail.

I never grew up having anything with fresh cranberries until I started cooking for myself. The one thing I still can’t get myself to accept is that damn canned cranberry jelly (I mean….it comes out in the shape of the can!) Thankfully, I don’t eat that kind of nonsense anyway 😉 I did try to make my own cranberry sauce many years ago and it was terrible! So sour….I plan on trying again, hopefully, this year! Until then, I’ll just throw in some chicken breasts, fresh cranberries, and cranberry juice into the slow cooker and let it do its cranberry magic!

Slow Cooker Cranberry Chicken

So easy, so delicious, perfect leftover, and yes, even more amazing with some of that ketchup 😉 If you’re like me and only eat chicken, Thanksgiving is usually vegan or I’ll make some chicken for myself. This chicken recipe would be rather perfect for that! And even if you’re still weary about cranberries, this slow cooker cranberry chicken may just change your mind! So deep and rich with a lovely semi-sweet cranberry flavor. Chicken + fruit + slow cooker = perfection everytime! Trust me!

So tell me:

+ Cranberry fan or hater?

+ What was one food you HATED growing up?

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