Every week we’ll post a recipe that we both made. This week’s recipe was Crock Pot Honey Sesame Chicken. Printable recipe can be found at the bottom of this post.  The original recipe can be found over at Very Culinary.

Robyn’s Take:

This week’s recipe was my choice. I don’t remember where I initially saw it (probably Pinterest, that seems to be where 95% of my recipes are spotted these days), but I do know that it was one of the recipes Fred picked out as one he’d be willing to eat. Also, it’s a crock pot recipe, and anything I can toss into a crock pot and ignore all day is aces.

Your ingredients:

Boneless, skinless chicken thighs (remember how just a few weeks ago we made chicken breasts in the crock pot and they were dry as hell? I swear to god, I’m never making breasts in the crock pot again. What a waste.), honey, salt and pepper, soy sauce, diced onion, ketchup, olive oil, garlic, red pepper flakes, cornstarch, sesame seeds, scallions.

Damn. That’s a bunch of ingredients, isn’t it? You know Amanda is swelling up with thrilled amazement at all those ingredients. And not a box of cake mix in sight!

Put your chicken thighs in the crock pot, then sprinkle ’em with salt and pepper. If you WANT to season both sides of the thighs with salt and pepper before you put them in there, you certainly may. That’s kind of overkill, though, don’t you think? No one needs that much salt and pepper.

In a bowl, combine your soy sauce, honey, onion, ketchup, oil, garlic, and pepper flakes. I used a 4-cup measuring cup, because everything fit nicely and it was easy to dump it all over the chicken without making a mess.

Dump it over your chicken.

Make sure the chicken is evenly coated.

Then put the cover on and cook it on low for 4 hours. I meant to clean the house while it was cooking, but… nah. Why not take a nap on the couch with a bunch of kittens instead, AM I RIGHT?

When the chicken is done, remove it from the crock pot, leaving the sauce in the crock pot. Dissolve cornstarch in water, stir it into the sauce in the crock pot, then replace the lid and cook on high for 10 more minutes or until it’s slightly thickened. Now, I let mine cook for more like 20 minutes and there was never any thickening that I could tell, so I’m skeptical how necessary this particular step is.

Shred chicken into bite-sized pieces – which should be pretty simple, since the chicken is pretty much falling apart at this point.

Ruth came up to keep me company while I was chopping the scallions. She was amazed at the sight of all that chicken, so I eventually had to banish her from the counter lest she figure out how to get to it, whereupon she would slobber all over it and then I’d get cat cooties.

Spoon some cooked rice onto a plate (I think cooked spaghetti or angel hair would work, too), top with chicken, top THAT with some of the (un)thickened sauce, then sprinkle sesame seeds and chopped scallions on top.

The verdict? Damn it was good! We ate every last bite, and I will absolutely make it again. I’m wondering if the apricot chicken recipe would have worked out better if we’d used chicken thighs instead of chicken breasts. Mind you, I’m not curious enough about that to actually give it a try, I’m just wondering.

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Nance’s Take:
Psst, let me tell you something about Robyn…she has a thing for any kind of asian inspired food out there and she thinks I haven’t noticed it.  I noticed that shit the first time I ever met her and she ordered an oriental salad at Applebee’s Restaurant. I’m on to you, Robyn. Cut yo’ shit.

I washed these damn things, patted them dry, and sprinkled a shit-ton of pepper and salt on them…before I looked at the recipe and realized they were suppose to be boneless/skinless chicken thighs. Really?

DAMMIT, ROBYN.

Here’s where y’all can call me a pussy, but I was not about to go digging into chicken flesh and such without cooking it first. I just cannot go there and shut-up right now, Fred Anderson!

I planned on using two different cooking utensils.  This is me showing you the two things I planned on using because I had nothing better to take a picture of.

I am severely right-handed and ended up just throwing on gloves and ripping the shit out of that meat.  Also note the lack of crock-pot.  I originally thought I would toss this bitch together, cook it for 4 hours and have it ready in time for dinner.  But cooking and shucking that chicken took more than a minute so I had to come up with Plan B.  I may have dawdled a little.  Hush.

Because I like to share the pain here’s a picture of Peace eating something gross. Dog food, bread and chicken broth. We’re guessing from her palate that Peace was brought up on garbage food/table scraps.  Shirley has gotten her to eat regular dog food by adding bread to it, but on this day Peace wasn’t having it.  My secret weapon?  Chicken broth.  It’s a lovely visual, huh?

You’re welcome.

Waldo, always keeping an eye on his buddy.  I love how long and outrageous his whiskers are.

Feed the dog. Make a soup. Whatever.

When I first saw the recipe I was bitching about having to buy sesame seeds when I only needed 1/2 of a tablespoon. Shirley suggested I “scrape some off of a bun” which made me laugh, but we don’t even buy sesame seed buns. I decided that I just wasn’t going to use sesame seeds, but Shirley took pity on me when she was at the grocery store and picked them up. She also bought nutmeg. I’m not exactly sure why because we have nutmeg, but I suppose you can never have too much nutmeg, right?

I threw everything together and tossed it in the oven. This picture? If you look closely, you’ll see that it was literally in the oven when I took the picture. I was so over this recipe.

This is what it looked like when I got it out of the oven. I skipped the entire part where it said to add cornstarch and all that bullshit because there didn’t appear to be much juice for thickening anyway.  I may or may not have forgot about this damn thing in the oven because I was busy talking to Rick on the telephone.  What?  Attention Deficit, mofos.  It can happen to you!

There’s your fucking sesame seeds, Robyn.

Rick said it was fantastic. Shirley wasn’t home that night. Trey was at work. I ate a 99 cent frozen pizza.

Are you picking up what I’m laying down?