Honey Sesame Chicken

Lately my afternoons have been starting out with me camped out on the floor outside Boy #2's room waiting for him to fall asleep for his nap. Otherwise he constantly gets out of bed and I'm constantly coming upstairs to put him back in bed. I think he's heading towards dropping his nap, but so far he still takes one most days, thankfully. Some days I sit here for a very long time. Other days he falls asleep pretty quickly. Normally I have my phone with me and do something like catch up on Scrabble or Words With Friends or Draw Something, but today I brought my laptop up and decided to do a blog post. I just uploaded our Easter pictures and that included some dinner pics from recently. It was a tough choice which one to do because we've had some tasty things, but I figured I'd start with this one. I tend to be somewhat against cooking chicken in the crockpot because it ALWAYS seems to turn out dry. Dry chicken is not delicious, and personally I like to eat delicious food. This one sounded tasty and since there was a sauce with it, I thought that maybe it would be okay...because sometimes dry chicken can at least be masked with enough sauce.

Honey Sesame Chicken
Source: Adapted from Table For Two blog via Pinterest

1 to 1.5 lb. boneless, skinless chicken breasts
Salt and pepper
3/4 cup of honey
1/2 cup of low sodium soy sauce
1/2 cup ketchup
2 tbsp. vegetable oil
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes
Cornstarch
Sesame seeds

Place the chicken breasts in the crockpot insert and sprinkle salt and pepper on both sides.
In a medium sized bowl, combine honey, soy sauce, ketchup, oil, garlic powder, onion powder, and red pepper flakes. Stir to combine well. Pour over the chicken in the crockpot.

Cook on low for 3-4 hours or high for 1 1/2-2 1/2 hours.

When done, remove chicken and cut into chunks. Prior to putting the chicken back in the stockpot, combine some cornstarch in water and whisk it into the crockpot to thicken up the sauce a bit. Throw the chicken back in and stir around to recoat the chicken in the sauce.
Serve hot over a bed of white rice or quinoa (optional) and sprinkle some sesame seeds on top.

*****

The original recipe called for chicken thighs, but I only had chicken breasts. And the original recipe had more honey and less ketchup and real garlic and real onion, but I didn't have enough honey, I accidentally used too much ketchup, and I was too lazy to chop up garlic and onion. Hey, at least I'm honest. Also, since I'm being honest, I forgot to get this started when I had planned, so I had to throw my chicken into the crockpot frozen and say a prayer and cross my fingers it was done in time for dinner. Thankfully it was. And you know what? It wasn't dried out!!! Perhaps using frozen chicken and checking the chicken when you think it might not be cooked yet are the keys? Maybe I've just been leaving it in the crockpot for too long all these years. I don't know. But, I do know that this was DELICIOUS and my whole family really liked it. I opted to serve it with quinoa instead of rice because I only had brown rice and not enough time for it to cook, plus I love the nutritional content of quinoa over rice.

This is definitely something we'll have again, especially since most of the ingredients are things I always have on hand.