Easy Crock-Pot Chicken Cacciatore {freezer meal}
You won’t believe how easy this Crock-Pot Chicken Cacciatore is! It has only 5 ingredients but it tastes so fresh and delicious. You can make it ahead as a freezer meal. Combining a freezer meal with the crockpot is a match made in heaven. Save time and money. Win-win!
Our family likes Italian flavors. I often make a different version of chicken cacciatore when I’m making my freezer meals, but that one is a bit more involved. It requires cubing the chicken and has more ingredients. When I’m in a hurry or wanting to make as many meals as possible as quickly as possible, I opt for this easy crockpot chicken cacciatore recipe instead.
Chicken Cacciatore is traditionally served over pasta, but it can also be served over rice or polenta if you prefer or if you are on a keto or low carb diet.
We recently made this recipe again during a 5 ingredients or less freezer meal marathon that we did. You can see that in the video below:
Why is it called Chicken Cacciatore?
I have to admit that it is a unique name for a dish. The word “cacciatore” means hunter in Italian and apparently, it was hunters who first made this. It was likely made not with chicken in those early years, but with rabbit or other wild game they caught. This was back in the Renaissance so other meat would have been more commonly available.
Chicken cacciatore is sometimes mixed up with chicken parmesan. The easiest way to be able to tell the difference is that cheese is involved where chicken parmesan is referenced, whereas, with cacciatore, there is no cheese.
Easy Crock-Pot Chicken Cacciatore Recipe:
Ingredients:
- 3-5 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
- 24 oz. jar spaghetti sauce
- 1 zucchini, coarsely chopped
- 3/4 cup onion, chopped
- 1 Tbsp. Italian seasoning
Assembly instructions:
- Place the chicken breasts in a large, resealable freezer bag.
- Dump the other ingredients in the bag.
- Remove excess air from the bag and seal. Freeze flat.
Cooking instructions:
- Thaw.
- Dump bag contents into the slow cooker.
- Cook on low for 4-6 hours. Ensure that chicken is cooked through before serving.
- Serve over your choice of pasta noodles. We usually use penne or rotini, but a long noodle is fine too.
You can throw this together so quickly that you might as well make more than one at a time. Just prop the bags open by folding the top over and setting them open on the counter. Line the bags up and then add the chicken to each one before dumping in the rest of the ingredients. This chicken dump recipe couldn’t be easier!
There is a lot of versatility with this recipe because you can use your choice of pasta sauce, swap out the chicken breasts for chicken thighs, and serve it on your favorite type of pasta.
This is such a family-friendly dish. Between being able to make it ahead and just pull it out of the freezer and the fact that it cooks in the crockpot, it’s truly a stress-free dinner. When we’re in a rush, we just keep this in the slow cooker and have the kids load a bit of pasta on their plate and then scoop the cacciatore right from the crockpot®. 
You can use whatever variety of pasta sauce you prefer. Experiment and see which you like best. We usually just go for simple basil, but it’s also good with a pasta sauce with mushrooms or spicy or chunky vegetables. Give a few of them a try and let me know which you liked best.
- 3-5 chicken breasts boneless, skinless
- 24 oz. jar spaghetti sauce
- 1 zucchini coarsely chopped
- 3/4 cup onion chopped
- 1 Tbsp. Italian seasoning
-
Place the chicken breasts in a large, resealable freezer bag.
-
Dump the other ingredients in the bag.
-
Remove excess air from the bag and seal. Freeze flat.
-
Thaw.
-
Dump bag contents into the slow cooker.
-
Cook on low for 4-6 hours. Ensure that chicken is cooked through before serving.
-
Serve over your choice of pasta noodles.
You might also like these easy freezer meals:
