Clean Crockpot Honey Chicken

My friend Melissa shared a pin with me for a Honey Chicken recipe in the crockpot that looked delicious, so I couldn’t wait to try it! For the most part I followed this recipe to a T but made it clean with the Clean Ketchup recipe from the Gracious Pantry. This gave me the perfect excuse to give my Kitchenaid standing mixer a go. Although this wasn’t that complicated of a recipe and I spent more time cleaning the mixer than actually using it! Also, next time I make this ketchup I think I’d make it with less honey; it’s pretty sweet.

Because chicken rarely comes in small amounts, I went ahead and doubled this recipe in the hopes that this Crockpot Honey Chicken is as good as it sounds!

Clean Crockpot Honey Chicken:

3/4 pound chicken
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/2 cup honey
1/8 cup ketchup
1/4 cup soy sauce (get the low sodium kind)
1/8 cup chopped onion (or 1/16 cup onion flakes)
1 tbs vegetable oil (I used EVOO)
1 clove garlic minced
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

First you season both sides of the chicken with salt and pepper, confession, I never actually measure salt and pepper when it’s used like this. Place the chicken in the crockpot and coat with the the honey sauce mixture; which is all the other ingredients.

Because I had the time, I cooked this on low for three hours. After the 2.5 hours I took the chicken out and cut it into cubes and put it back in the sauce for about 30 more minutes. I also added in some broccoli, onion and red bell pepper for added density to the dish and to get some vegetables in it. I mixed it all together in the crockpot so that everything was coated on all sides.

I cut the vegetables into large pieces so that they would still be a little crunchy after cooking in the crockpot for 30 minutes. Look how much of difference all of that color adds to the chicken.

In the last 30 minutes the Crockpot Honey Chicken was cooking I would occasionally stir it so that all the vegetables and chicken were coated really well with the sauce.

Because I cooked it on the low setting, I think you could easily let it cook a little longer if you like the vegetables a little softer. The site where I got this recipe also has oven directions for this recipe if you aren’t crockpot obsessed like I am! I also opted to do prepare the chicken this way because I am hoping it will reheat better throughout the week.

The Crockpot Honey Chicken was a huge success. I’m so glad my friend shared this recipe with me! Because I doubled the recipe as soon as the chicken was ready I started dividing it into servings thinking it would make 4 but the portions seemed so big I divided it into 5 servings.

As best I can tell, the chicken without the vegetables, has roughly 360 calories per serving. The small amount of spice from the red pepper flakes was a great balance to the sweetness of the honey.  I ate mine with one of those Minute Rice Individual serving cups of rice.

The Crockpot Honey Chicken is a quick and easy recipe I will most definitely be trying again! (I tried really hard to serve this so it looked perfect, not quite there, but pretty darn close!)