Slow Cooker Cranberry Chicken

Easy cranberry chicken is made in the slow cooker for a low-effort weeknight dinner. Serve this sweet and tangy chicken over rice or mashed potatoes for a meal your family will ask for again and again.

This time of year is totally slow cooker season, right?

The slow cooker is where it’s at when I want dinner to already be done at the end of the day. Plus, so many slow cooker meals are just so comforting and cozy.

Some of our favorites are slow cooker beef and barley stew, crockpot taco soup, crockpot spaghetti sauce, and this slow cooker cranberry chicken.

What is cranberry chicken?

This cranberry chicken is a recipe that we got from my husband’s grandmother. She’s been making it for so long that no one remembers where it originally came from. Most likely, she clipped it out of a magazine or the newspaper or something like that.

This is a super simple 4-ingredient recipe that you can throw in the crockpot in the morning and dinner will be ready when you get home from work.

Chicken gets cooked in a mixture of tangy salad dressing, onion soup mix, and cranberry sauce. The final sauce tastes a bit tangy, a bit savory, and a bit sweet. It’s also a great way to use up leftover cranberry sauce from Thanksgiving dinner!

It’s a totally surprising combination of flavors that we all love!

How to make this cranberry chicken recipe

Ingredients you’ll need

You only need 4 ingredients to get this cranberry chicken going in your slow cooker:

• 1 cup Catalina or California French salad dressing
• 1 (1-ounce) packet Lipton onion soup mix
• 1 (14-ounce) can cranberry sauce (or 1 ½ cups homemade cranberry sauce)
• 2 pounds boneless/skinless chicken breasts or thighs

Catalina dressing, sometimes called California French dressing, is similar to French dressing but has more ketchup in it and has a thinner consistency. You definitely want to use Catalina dressing in this recipe, not regular French dressing, especially since it serves as the main liquid for cooking the chicken.

You can use any cranberry sauce you like or have on hand. I like using a whole berry cranberry sauce or my homemade cranberry sauce, but jellied will also work!

Feel free to use chicken breasts or thighs; either one works great.

Making this recipe

This is so easy, you barely need a recipe for it.

Add the salad dressing, dry soup mix, and cranberry sauce to a 3-quart slow cooker and stir to combine. If you’re using jellied cranberry sauce, you might have to pull out a whisk to get it to mix with the dressing.

Add the chicken to the crock and make sure it gets coated with the sauce.

Cover and cook on high for 4 hours or on low for 6-7 hours. It’ll even be ok for up to 8 hours.

Once the chicken is cooked, shred it and add it back to the sauce. And that’s it! You’re ready to serve your cranberry chicken.

We like it as-is, but feel free to give it a taste and add some black pepper or a pinch of salt if you feel it needs it.

Serving suggestions

So how exactly do we like to enjoy this cranberry chicken?

Our favorite way is to serve it with plenty of sauce over cooked rice or garlic mashed potatoes. Make some air fryer green beans or honey glazed carrots to go with it and you’ve got a super easy weeknight meal!

You could also serve it in the style of slow cooker pulled pork or crockpot pulled chicken and turn it into a sandwich. Top it with a little easy slaw and you could even serve this as part of a game-day spread!

Frequently asked questions