HONEY SESAME CHICKEN

 During my staycation I decided that I would try to do one of those multiple freezer to crock pot meals for busy days  that I have been seeing on the internet. I thought at first I would start out slowly so I picked out 5 recipes for chicken and 5 for beef and wrote down all the ingredients I needed. My idea was to go to the store and figure out what was on sale chicken or beef. Chicken won out with skinless boneless breasts for $1.99/lb. So I get home with 10 lbs. of chicken and a look of you’re crazy, “that’s too much chicken and I hope we are not eating chicken all week!” from my daughter. After dinner I started gathering all my supplies for all 5 meals. I used 4 of our favorite chicken recipes and then chose one new recipe called honey sesame chicken. My daughter came in and started taking pictures and ended up helping in the meal preparations. Well about an hour and half later, a little arguing with the daughter on how to do it exactly and a glass a wine (for me only) we were done. Yea! 5 chicken dinners done! Of course I was happy it was over. Will I ever do it again? Maybe, maybe not.  On one hand it seemed to take all my creativity away because I had to follow a recipe and couldn’t use whatever I had on hand. I have been known to do a lot of substituting. On the other hand I did have 5 dinners done.

 So with all my money spent on chicken we tried the new recipe for dinner last Thursday night and immediately wished we had doubled the recipe. It was that good even my mother wanted seconds. The meal went together really quick and easy and clean up was a breeze. I sprinkled the sesame seeds on last and served it over rice.  It was even better as leftovers for lunch the next day. A little trick I did learn with the freezer cooking was to put the meal first in a crock pot liner bag, twist tie it , then place in a freezer bag and write instructions with a marker on the bag. Then just defrost the dinner in the refrigerator and remove the gallon freezer bag and place the meal in the crock pot, untie it, cover and cook It, and then throw the bag away.  Maybe later I will try the beef recipes later if I find a good sale on beef. I think I probably would have more fun if I did both beef and chicken, invited some friends over to make a lot of them up, and had a few more glasses of wine. So finally after my long post is my new favorite chicken recipe. I hope you enjoy this as much as we did.

 

INGREDIENTS:

1-2 lbs of boneless chicken  
1 cup of honey
½ cup of soy sauce
½ cup of diced onion
¼ cup of ketchup
2 tbs. of vegetable oil ( I used olive oil)
2 cloves of minced garlic
¼ tsp. of pepper flakes
Salt and pepper to taste
4 tsp. of cornstarch dissolved in 6 tbs. of sauce after it’s cooked to thicken the sauce
Sesame seeds for garnish

DIRECTIONS:

Spray the crock pot with PAM or use a crock pot liner like I did. Lightly salt and pepper the chicken and place in the bottom of the pot. Combine the rest of the ingredients except the cornstarch and sesame seeds in a small bowl. Pour over the chicken. Cover and cook on low for 3-4 hours or high for 2- 2  1/2 hours. Then remove the chicken from the pot. Add about 6 tbs. of cornstarch to the sauce and stir till all the lumps are out. Allow the sauce to thicken a little. Cut the chicken into bite size pieces and return to the pot. Return the chicken to the pot and mix thoroughly.  Serve over rice or noodles and garnish with sesame seeds.