Honey BBQ Slow Cooker Chicken Taquitos
Easy Honey BBQ Slow Cooker Chicken Taquitos, filled with a creamy mixture of chicken, cheese, and homemade BBQ sauce! Cooking the chicken in the crock pot makes it so tender and full of delicious flavor!
Pin this recipe for later
These Slow Cooker Chicken Taquitos… they’re my favorite easy meal right now! With these taquitos, you get a lot of payoff for your (minimal) efforts. The recipe makes about 18 good-sized taquitos. Depending on the size of your family, you should have plenty of leftovers.
Freeze those leftover taquitos, and you’ll have the easiest meal ever waiting and ready for super busy nights. These freeze so well, and I’ve included freezer directions in the recipe below.
Also try my simple chicken taquitos recipe!
I love using my slow cooker to cook chicken for dishes such as chicken enchiladas, crockpot chicken tacos, and taquitos. You can set it and forget it, and the cooked meat is always fall-apart tender. The chicken for these taquitos cooks in a quick variation of my homemade BBQ sauce, so it comes out of the slow cooker already full of sweet BBQ flavor. You’ll add more of the sauce to the taquito filling, too!
Be sure to try my similar slow cooker honey garlic chicken, Instant Pot honey garlic chicken breasts, or crockpot BBQ chicken recipe if you love BBQ chicken.
How to Prepare Slow Cooker Chicken Taquitos
Prepare the chicken in your slow cooker following the recipe directions below.
Warm the tortillas in the microwave until soft enough to roll. Working with one tortilla at a time, spoon about ¼ cup of the prepared chicken mixture onto the lower third of the tortillas and roll up as tightly as you can.
Place the taquitos seam side down on a flat parchment-lined baking sheet. Spray lightly with cooking spray and sprinkle with coarse kosher salt if desired.
Bake at 400 degrees F for 12 to 16 minutes until golden brown. Serve with additional bbq sauce or sour cream.
Feeding kids is a struggle. It’s the best when we find a new dinner recipe the whole family loves. We’re almost there with these Honey BBQ Slow Cooker Chicken Taquitos. William will eat a few bites of these, but not more. The rest of us happily gobble up these chicken taquitos! Four out of five isn’t bad, right? 😉
Why you’ll love these chicken taquitos:
- Your slow cooker makes cooking the chicken almost effortless, and makes the meat extra tender.
- This recipe makes a big batch of taquitos with little effort, so you can plan ahead and stock your freezer for busy days.
- This family-friendly meal is perfect for parties AND busy weeknights!
Honey BBQ Slow Cooker Chicken Taquitos
Ingredients
For the BBQ Sauce:
- ½ cup ketchup
- ¼ cup honey
- 2 tablespoons molasses
- 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
- 1 teaspoon chili powder
- ½ teaspoon paprika
- ½ teaspoon garlic powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
Remaining Ingredients:
- 2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts
- 2 teaspoons cornstarch
- 4 ounces cream cheese, cut into cubes and softened
- 4 ounces (1 cup) shredded Monterey jack cheese
- ½ cup chopped fresh cilantro
- 18 small whole grain tortillas
- cooking spray
- kosher salt
Instructions
- In a medium bowl, whisk together all BBQ sauce ingredients.
- Place chicken in bottom of slow cooker. Pour BBQ sauce over top of chicken. Cover and cook on low heat for 3-3 ½ hours, or for 2 hours on high.
- Once chicken is cooked through, transfer to a large bowl, leaving the extra sauce in the slow cooker. Add cornstarch to the liquid left in the slow cooker and whisk until completely dissolved. Increase heat to high and cook, uncovered, for 10 minutes to thicken.
- Meanwhile, shred the chicken. To the shredded chicken, add ¾ cup of the thickened sauce from the slow cooker, the cream cheese, Monterey jack cheese, and cilantro. Stir until well combined. (Reserve the extra BBQ sauce for serving.)
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- If needed (to keep them from tearing), warm tortillas in the microwave between two paper towels until soft enough to roll. Working with one tortilla at a time, spoon about ¼ cup of the chicken mixture onto the lower third of the tortillas and roll up as tightly as you can.
- Place taquitos, seam-side-down, on the baking sheet. Repeat with remaining tortillas and filling. (At this point, you can freeze some of the taquitos for later. See the note below for instructions.)*
- Spray taquitos lightly with cooking spray and sprinkle with kosher salt. Bake for 12-16 minutes, until lightly golden. Serve with additional BBQ sauce, if desired.
Notes
These taquitos look so good, Kristine! They’re one of my favorite dishes to make for an easy meal, but I’ve never thought to make them in the slow cooker before. Such a great idea! And I love that you used honey bbq sauce, my favorite!
Thank you, Gayle! I’ve only recently started using my slow cooker for these and I’m hooked!
Mmmm, these look so good! This is the kind of meal my whole family loves!
These taquitos look amazing! I love the sweet/savory combo 🙂
Maybe William will come around…I for one would devour these, and I’m pretty sure everybody in my house would love them! I love using my slow cooker and that sauce sounds delicious!!
I absolutely love taquitos, but I’ve never tried a honey BBQ version. I love the idea though, because these look and sound incredible! That BBQ sauce sounds delicious and I love how there’s no crazy ingredients in it. By the way, it was sooo great meeting you last week! So glad we all got together, you’re just as sweet in person 🙂
I’m so glad I got to meet you, too, Danielle! It was so fun to chat and you are super sweet too! 🙂
I’m having a BBQ Garden party in two weeks and I’m out looking for inspiration. I was thinking Pork, but I want to make it special. This is my first party in my new home (I just moved to Stockholm), and I want to to stand out. I’m no expert chef, but I like to cook. Thanks for this post and the inspiration. Much needed 😉
These look tasty, as do the Sweet Potato Black Bean Taquitos!
I’m still unclear about 1 thing. Â You talk about making the “taquitos” from scratch and freezing them. Â But, I am guessing you mean the whole assembled taquito, including the filling, correct? Â You are purchasing the actual taquito / tortilla from a store, correct? If so, I’d love a recipe for yummy, healthy gluten free tortillas to use with these recipes rather than store bought!
Hi Lindsay, you’re right, I freeze the assembled taquitos. I usually buy my tortillas just because I don’t have time to make them from scratch all the time. I have made whole wheat tortillas before and they are much better than store-bought! I haven’t tried making a gluten free tortilla yet but will add that to my list of recipes to experiment with. 🙂
I dread bringing meals to neighbors because I never know what to make! Pinning this to make the next time an occasion arises, although I think I may try it for my family too. Thanks Kristine!
These look amazing – have you ever tried it with corn tortillas? They do not always interchange in recipes very well…Thanks!Â
I haven’t tried corn tortillas and my thinking is that they may tear when you try to roll them up. They might be worth a try, though! (Definitely warm them a bit in the microwave between damp paper towels to make them more pliable before rolling.)
Thanks for your fabulous recipes. I love the layout of your blog and recipe printables. I have loved the ones I have tried!
I made this tonight and it is delicious. I didn’t make tacquitos though, but am eating it in a bowl with rice as I had some I wanted to use up. I tried another chicken and cilantro crock pot dish last week that contained tomato sauce and I didn’t like the bitter tomato taste. This was great, as barbeque in the crock pot seems to usually be a winner for me. As I wasn’t making tacquitos I just put all the chicken back in the crock pot with the sauce to make the cheese melt. Thanks for sharing the recipe! Delicious!!!
Can you substitute pre-made BBQ sauce for this recipe?
Yes, you can use 1 cup of BBQ sauce. 🙂
what brand of tortillas do you use.? Is whole wheat ok to use
Hi Michelle,
The common tortillas in our grocery store are Mission. I have used both regular flour and whole wheat before.
Making these tonight for a group of mainly kids )soem adults) any ideas on what to serve them with?
Here are a few ideas: rice, beans, fresh fruit/fruit salad, green salad, tortilla chips with salsa/guacamole. I hope everyone enjoys the taquitos!
these are excellent. my boyfriend raved about them.
I never leave reviews but WOW THIS IS SO GOOD I WILL NEVER EVER STOP MAKING THEM. And the macros aren’t bad if you’re using carb control tortillas and low fat cream cheese. 15/10!!!Â
What do you mean by flash freezing? Can I just put them assembled in the freezer?
Flash freezing means you first freeze the assembled taquitos in a single layer on a baking sheet and then, once frozen, transfer them to a zip-top bag. If you put them in the zip-top bag from the start they may stick together.
If I don’t have molasses, can I use maple syrup?Â
Yes that should work fine. Enjoy!