Crockpot | DCEP

Sweet Baby Ray’s Crockpot Chicken – Nance and Robyn make the same recipe

Posted on June 17, 2013 by admin

Every week we’ll post a recipe that we both made. This week’s recipe was Sweet Baby Ray’s Crockpot Chicken. Printable recipe can be found at the bottom of this post. The original recipe can be found over at Just a Pinch.

Robyn’s Take:

This week’s recipe was Nance’s choice. I’ll be interested what prompted this choice, because I have my suspicions. What suspicions, you ask? Well. I think Nance was like “This recipe looks really simple and it will make Amanda’s head blow clean off her shoulders at the idea that we’re referring to this as a recipe.”

That’s right – I think Nance is Amanda-baiting. Which, don’t get me wrong – I’m ALL for Amanda-baiting. I bet Amanda’s nostrils are flaring in anticipation of how much this is NOT a recipe and doesn’t meet her high standards. I bet Amanda wears a headband and cardigans and has her hair straightened to within an inch of its life. Amanda’s hair wouldn’t dare stray out of place for one instant or she’d just pluck the offending hair right out of her head. Amanda, I think I’m saying, has stringent and rigid standards regarding what is and is not a recipe.

ANYway. (I bet Amanda hates it when I say “ANYway.”)(Also probably not a fan of parentheses.)

Your ingredients (“Not MY ingredients,” Amanda is saying.)

Chicken breasts, white vinegar, brown sugar, red pepper flakes, and garlic powder. Also, a bottle of Sweet Baby Ray’s barbecue sauce. Fred was in charge of buying the Sweet Baby Ray’s (I had kittens to cuddle), and he reported that there was nothing that was JUST plain regular barbecue sauce, they had 30 different variations, so he bought the one that looked the best to him, the Sweet ‘n Spicy (Amanda: “Grrr! Sweet AND Spicy. AND.”)

Those chickens breasts are store-bought. After the last time we used our home-grown chicken in a recipe and then didn’t like it, Fred declared that from then on out if we were making a recipe for the first time and weren’t sure if we’d like it, we’d use store-bought because it is a mortal sin to use home-grown chicken for meals that we end up not liking. He’s so bossy and forceful, that Fred.

The recipe calls for 4 – 6 chicken breasts, but store-bought chicken breasts are so damn big that I’m not sure 6 of them would have fit in the crockpot, for the love of Sweet Baby Jesus (see what I did there?)

Okay, put your chicken breasts in the crockpot.

Mix all the other ingredients together. I used a big measuring cup so that pouring it over the chicken breasts would be easier.

I had to get a little violent because my garlic powder was all clumped together in one big, uh, CLUMP. I suspect that bottle of garlic powder is about as old as I am. Yes, I know you’re supposed to replace your herbs and spices regularly. I don’t give a shit. You’re also not supposed to keep them over the stove where they’re subjected to heat. What, I don’t spend enough time pampering cats, dogs, and chickens, I need to pamper my goddamn spices, too? Fuck that.

“The Prince will have a light snack after his nap and before his massage. Also, be sure that the masseuse isn’t all chatty. The Prince hates it when they’re chatty. Just rub the toes and shut UP, you know?”

(Sorry about that watermark being all up in his face. I have a real problem with people stealing my pictures, using them without attribution, and then suggesting that I should be grateful for it. Oh, don’t get me STARTED. And that picture, I’m sorry – SO FREAKIN’ CUTE. I was half tempted to plaster the watermark across his damn forehead.)

Dump the barbecue sauce, etc over your chicken breasts.

Cook it on low, 4 – 6 hours. When given a range like that I usually split the difference (5 hours), but I was a little late in getting it all in the crockpot, so it only cooked for 4 hours.

This is what it looked like right before I put the lid on the crockpot. It looked pretty much the same after 4 hours.

And this is after I removed the chicken breasts from the liquid.

I was going to slice the chicken breast and ARRANGE it and take an artsy-fartsy picture, but the chicken pretty much shredded as I cut it, so you get this.

The verdict? Meh. Totally meh. Like, meh minus. The chicken was dry, and just… meh. Fred felt the same. I wouldn’t waste any home-grown chicken on this recipe. The sauce was good and might be better on something else, but I won’t make this recipe again. Life’s too short for meh chicken.

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Nance’s Take:

I’m from Pennsylvania and there’s no way in hell I would try to make my own barbecue sauce. People in the south know their shit when it comes to barbecue and this yankee prefers to just enjoy the good stuff when I visit. But I do use barbecue sauce in a bottle sometimes. I stick with Sweet Baby Ray’s or KC Masterpiece. I do not like Kraft’s Barbecue Sauce because it tastes like the stuff I threw up that one time I was mixing tequila with beer. In the same glass. Glass after glass after glass…

Everybody’s different and I’m not going to judge (this time), but I have been known to pitch a hiss if the husband brings home that cheap Kraft Barbecue shit just because I forgot to specify a brand on the grocery list. Goodbye, Kraft Sponsorship! Heh.

I picked this recipe because a) I recognized the name b) it looked easy and c) it was made in a crockpot. There are days when I can’t be bothered to stop what I’m doing to make dinner. Especially if I fell down a rabbit hole of trying to figure out if Amanda Bynes is crazy or just has a vicious drug problem.

A crockpot meal is the perfect solution for, ahem, busy people like me.

I just realized that this picture makes it look like I don’t know how to spell the word chicken. I do. When I’m packing up a butt-load of chicken (we buy in bulk because I’ll be goddamned if I’m gonna chop the head off a live one!) I sometimes get lazy about my penmanship. These chicken breasts have been cut into smaller sizes because we’re controlling portions. Some of us eat the leftovers for lunch the next day so it all works out. I just told you that in case you were dividing the chicken by the number of people in this house and were getting confused. You’re welcome.

Crybaby Felina didn’t want to be up on the counter with the Barbecue Sauce.

Here she is walking away from the situation because I had a dilema and she was over it. I didn’t know the amount of barbecue sauce I should use since my bottle said 50% more free. I couldn’t decide if I should only use half of the bottle or just dump the whole thing in there and hope for the best. This recipe would have been more helpful if it had included what size bottle for chrissakes.

Of course Sadie Mae was all about posing for DCEP because she’s the good one. If you look real close, you can see where I had her toenails (front paws only) painted a lovely shade of metallic blue. She drags the top of her feet across the cement on our porch when she walks (arthritis/old age) and it just plum ruined her manicure. The look on her face tells me that she doesn’t care. At all.

Remember when Pizza Hut was just new and they had glass shaker bottles of this stuff on their tables? I would sprinkle it all over my pizza and it was fabulous. Now? I don’t eat Pizza Hut because…barf. Bye, bye Pizza Hut Sponsorship! Truth Game: When I left home to live in Washington, DC at the grand old age of 18, Shirley stole a shaker while we ate at Pizza Hut so I would have one in my new apartment. Shirley. STOLE.

Robyn’s probably getting ready to kill me by now. Trash talking possible sponsors and sharing my mother’s criminal past. Whee!

This is what everything looked like when I threw it all into a bowl. I know you’re impressed. I ended up using about 3/4 of the bottle since my brain gave up wondering what could possibly go wrong. Who gives a shit?

Action shot taken by Shirley (aka: mom). You can also see where I deviated from the recipe because I sprinkled pepper (not salt) on the chicken and sprayed the shit out of the crockpot with cooking spray. Pro-tip: Pepper the hell out of the sides of the crockpot so you look like an idiot.

Another action shot because Shirley was all proud of herself.

This is what I ended up with. I will tell you where I screwed up – I fucked around so much that I ended up having to cook it on high for a bit in order to have it in time for dinner. Cooking that shit on high made it DRY. VERY, VERY DRY. Hard to believe when you see that picture up there, huh? Yup. I suppose you could lick it if you don’t want to deal with that whole dry thing. But I’m pretty sure bending over and licking your chicken at the dinner table is frowned upon.

But here’s the very best part of all…

IT SUCKED! Blech. The recipe took a perfectly good barbecue sauce and turned it into a very poor imitation of that cheap-ass Kraft shit that I hate so much. No lie! The fuck with all that vinegar? Are you kidding me? Who wants to take a perfectly decent barbecue sauce and make it taste like swill? I was so freaking disappointed. This recipe needs to be flushed. Immediately.

Sweet Baby Ray's Crockpot Chicken - Nance and Robyn make the same recipe

Prep time

5 mins

Cook time

4 hours

Total time

4 hours 5 mins

: Entree

Cuisine: Croatian

Serves: 4-6

Ingredients

4 - 6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 bottle Sweet Baby Ray's barbecue sauce
¼ c. white vinegar
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp garlic powder
¼ c. brown sugar

Instructions

Place chicken breasts in the bottom of crock pot.
Mix barbecue sauce, vinegar, brown sugar, red pepper flakes, and garlic powder together. Pour over the chicken breasts.
Place lid on the crockpot and cook on low for 4 - 6 hours*
*Really, you don't want to cook the damn things for 6 hours. They'll be dust. Mine were too dry at 4 hours. I (Robyn) would actually go for 3 hours, then check to see if they're done. How do you check them? Slice into the middle of the chicken breast and check for pink. If there's pink, keep on cookin'. No pink? Ding! It's done! Then eat that chicken breast yourself, don't go serving it to someone else. What kind of animal are you? You ruined it! You gotta eat it yourself.

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Brown Sugar & Balsamic Glazed Pork Loin (Robyn & Nance)

Posted on April 2, 2012 by admin

Every week we’ll post a recipe that we both made. This week’s recipe was Pork Loin with a Brown Sugar & Balsamic glaze found over at C & C Marriage Factory. Printable recipe can be found at the bottom of this post.

Nance’s Take:

Truth Game: Robyn always takes the heat for finding recipes that involve a crock-pot, but I am all about using one when I can. The convenience of being able to walk away from meal preparation for hours at a time is just perfect for a flaky person like me.

When it’s my turn to look for the recipe of the week I always pick something that involves food I already have in the freezer/house. I buy pork tenderloin at Sam’s Club in the big huge log and cut it into 3-4 separate chunks before freezing. Truth Game: I have never in my life remembered making a pork loin that hasn’t been dry as shit and inedible. My mother throws it in a casserole dish with sauerkraut and it’s fabulous, but my shit is dry, dry, dry. Let me put it another way: The dogs really enjoy it when I make the pork loin because they think they’re living high off the hog (yes, I did just write that).

Here’s my thawed pork loin. Impressive, no?

And here it is after I added the seasonings. Please note that I a) do not even bother working with garlic in the raw and b) my pepper is fancypants cracked pepper that comes from a grinder. Truth game: I use minced garlic from a jar because I do not have the time or patience to mess around with garlic cloves and my fancypants cracked pepper is one of those disposable deals that you buy at Sam’s Club or even better, Aldi’s. There’s no shame in my game!

This is what it looked like 1 hour before it was finished. I admit to being a bit concerned because it appeared to be swimming in a shit-ton of grease. That needed to go. The recipe didn’t mention it, but I saw no purpose in having a grease-filled balsamic glaze.

I pulled it from the crock-pot, threw it on a plate and decided to slice it because I wanted to make sure the glaze went everywhere. Truth Game: I thought it might help out with any potential dryness that may occur considering it was me cooking the pork.

The glaze was pretty uncomplicated and I was, as you can see, pretty sloppy about it. A true food blogger would not let you see that her corn startch blew every where when she was dumping it into her pan. She also wouldn’t let you see one of her favorite spoons in the entire world.

Red rubber spoon brought to you by KitchenAid. This damn spoon cannot be destroyed (yet) and I’m pretty sure you will not find this bad boy at Williams Sonoma. Just saying! I cooked the shit out of this stuff and it didn’t get as thick as I thought it should be. But I didn’t mess with it as I wanted the recipe to be authentic (and that way Jane couldn’t call my dumb ass out for not doing the recipe right).

Action shot! I put the meat back in the crockpot, poured the glaze over it and walked away for an hour. Truth Game: I really did walk away, but that’s only because I had shit to read on the Internet (trainwreck blogs, FTW!). My mom and Rick were in the kitchen so they handled brushing the meat with the glaze every once in a while.

This is what it looked like when I came back.

And this is what it looked like when I threw it on a platter and set it down on the dinner table. I could have made it prettier and put the extra glaze in a bowl, but we’re a typical family that doesn’t really plate our meals and fuck that noise, we were hungry! Truth Game: Because we are a bunch of starch eaters we had baked potatoes and corn with this meat. It, of course, was a fabulous dinner. FABULOUS. Truth Game: We had the baked potatoes (huge restaurant variety) because I did not have faith in the meat coming out right. I fully intended to make the potatoes a complete meal if needed. We had leftover potatoes for a week. Heh.

Truth Game: This meat was moist and delicious. It will most definitely be going into the menu rotation.

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Robyn’s Take:

When I saw what Nance had chosen for this week’s recipe, I was THRILLED. Not only because it’s a crock pot recipe, but also because it was a pork roast recipe. Since we raise our own pigs, I end up with a LOT of pork roasts in the freezer, and I’m never quite sure what the hell to do with them. This looked like it was going to be easy enough, for sure.

Ingredients:

To start with, all you need is a roast, sage, salt and pepper, crushed garlic, and water. I had minced garlic on hand, so used that (I see no need for mincing your own garlic when you can buy the pre-minced stuff. Nance and I are clearly on the same page in this regard). Also, the recipe called for a boneless pork tenderloin or regular pork loin. When we have our pigs processed, the loin goes into chops, so I had no pork loin in the freezer. I did, however, have a shoulder roast, so I used that.

Basically, you make a rub with the sage, salt and pepper, and garlic, and rub it all over the roast. Then you throw it in the crock pot and ignore it for 6 or 7 hours. If you’re me, you might open the lid and stare in at it from time to time just for the hell of it.

Do I know how to party, or what?

So I had to put the pork in the crock pot at 7:30 am because I had a morning full of errands ahead of me, and I was pretty sure that if I waited ’til I got home to start it, we’d be eating dinner at 6. Fred Anderson would eat dinner at 3:30 in the afternoon every day if I allowed it – you think I’m kidding, and I am so NOT – so dinner at 6:00 wasn’t going to work for me. The recipe instructed to leave it in the crock pot for 6 – 8 hours, but an hour before the roast is done, you combine glaze ingredients and then brush it over the roast two or three times during that last hour of cooking.

I had all kinds of math to do – how long did I want to cook the roast? It was a small one, so probably 7 hours. Except that when it comes to crock pot recipes, I tend to go with the longest time, so okay 8 hours. Which meant that at the 7 hours point I needed to mix up the glaze ingredients. And then I had to think very very hard to decide that the 7 hours point would be 2:30. Then I forgot. Then I had to figure it out again. Then I forgot that I’d decided 2:30, and at 1:30 I went into the kitchen to gather the glaze ingredients.

And it’s a good damn thing I was early. Because one of the ingredients was balsamic vinegar. I’d checked in the cupboard to make sure I had a bottle of that stuff before I ran my errands (because one of the errands was to the grocery store, and if I’d needed a bottle, I could have picked it up. But I didn’t, because I had a bottle in the cupboard. God, is this reasoning fascinating, or what?)

In the gathering of my ingredients, I realized that the bottle of balsamic vinegar, which had been sitting in the cupboard for god knows how long, had solidified.

And it looked really, really gross.

I mean seriously, what the HELL? GAH.

Totally solid.

I thought maybe, perhaps, possibly, that the dollar store (which I can see from my front porch) might have a bottle of cheap balsamic vinegar, but alas it was not to be. Luckily I’m only about 10 minutes from the grocery store AND I was an hour ahead of schedule, so it wasn’t a big deal.

And the glaze ingredients are:

Brown sugar, cornstarch, balsamic vinegar, water, and soy sauce.

Mix everything up in a small sauce pan, then heat and stir ’til it thickens. Or if you’re me, put the sauce pan on the stove on medium heat, wander off, and then remember about five minutes later that OH SHIT, I’ve got something on the stove! It was bubbling quietly by the time I got back to the stove and was ready to come off the heat.

Brush the glaze over the roast 2 – 3 times in the course of the next hour. Which I did! Then save the rest of the glaze to serve on the side.

Then I let it cool and THEN I cut it up, and I might have taken a bite or two while I was cutting it up, and wow. It was REALLY good!

Gratuitous cat pic!

But what would Fred think? He’s not super crazy about soy sauce, would he like it or not? WOULD HE LIKE IT? WOULD HE NOT? Oh, I was on pins and needles, I really was.

(No I wasn’t.)

Turns out, Fred thought it was really damn good, too! My only complaint is that it didn’t make much (I used a 2 1/2 pound shoulder roast, but a large part of that was bone), we were barely able to get two meals out of it. Which actually, now that I say that, doesn’t sound too bad. But I would have liked to get a lunch or two from it as well, so maybe next time I’ll do two smaller roasts at the same time. There was certainly room in the crock pot!

We will definitely be having this again. Two thumbs up!

Brown Sugar & Balsamic Glazed Pork Loin

Original Source/Author: Recipe found at C & C Marriage Factory.com

: Main

Ingredients

1 (2 pound) boneless pork tenderloin (or regular pork loin)
1 teaspoon ground sage
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
1 clove garlic, crushed
½ cup water
Glaze
½ cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
¼ cup balsamic vinegar
½ cup water
2 tablespoons soy sauce

Instructions

Combine sage, salt, pepper and garlic. Rub over roast. Place in slow cooker with ½ cup water. Cook on low for 6-8 hours. About 1 hour before roast is done, combine ingredients for glaze in small sauce pan. Heat and stir until mixture thickens. Brush roast with glaze 2 or 3 times during the last hour of cooking. Serve with remaining glaze on the side.

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Hot Honeyed Spare Ribs

Posted on February 20, 2012 by admin

Every week we’ll post a recipe that we both made. This week’s recipe was Hot Honeyed Spare Ribs by Sandra Lee of Food Network Fame.

Nance’s take:

It was my turn to pick the recipe for the week. Boo-yah! No healthy eating and/or vegetables up in this hizzy! And if you thought that my recipe choice was well thought out and done with thorough research you are just nothing but Chris Brown wrong. I picked this type of recipe out because I had a package of ribs in my freezer and was completely over eating anything that involved chicken or ground beef. I chose this particular recipe because I googled rib recipe images and it caught my eye. I’m easy that way (insert whore joke here, I don’t mind). I also have to admit that I don’t watch Food Network television so the only thing I really know about Sandra Lee is that she apparently likes the alky-haul. Whatevs, I’m not judging. I save my judging for bloggers that end up on video because whoa, seeing that fake shit makes me so uncomfortable. Just type your words, fixate on your husband’s ass and stay off of video because YOU. CANNOT. ACT.

So yeah. RIBS. I finally looked at the recipe after it was all settled between Robyn and I that it was going to be the recipe we would do together. And that’s when I realized that I didn’t have all of the ingredients that I needed. I also didn’t know what one of the ingredients was. Chili Garlic sauce. The fuck? I had to google it. And I did find out that you can buy the stuff at Walmart, but Rick was going in a different direction (I was having him pick the stuff up while he was out). I told him that any brand would do as long as it was Chili Garlic Sauce.

I ended up with this. Apparently Rick is dyslexic. But I don’t think that it matters. We’re trying to eat a little healthier (says she who picked ribs) so I had him get the lighter dressing.

This is my homemade broiler (cookie rack/cookie sheet). I had a beautiful one that I gave to the thrift store because I never used it. I hate broiling anything because I usually burn foods (I get bored and walk away) or it makes a mess of my oven. Blech, to the broiling. You’ll see why I changed my mind about broiling at the end of this entry.

I’m also easing up on the sugar in this house. We use Splenda when we can and this is our favorite brand of “artificial” honey. It’s sold at Walmart and it’s cheap.

I just threw all of the ingredients in a measuring cup (that’s a two cup one) because measuring honey is a pain in the ass so I started with it in the bottom. I knew that once I mixed it all up it would come out easily with a spatula and save me from a sticky mess.

Once I dumped it all over my pre-broiled ribs (crock pot was sprayed with cooking spray, of course) I was pretty sure this recipe was going to be a total flop. When I walked past it I would try to baste it because I was worried that the meat would have no flavor. I can honestly say that I was getting PISSED that I wasted good money on a shitty recipe. After I splashed myself with the sauce for the third time I said the hell with it and walked away.

And that’s when things started to get good. I should have left it the hell alone from the very beginning and let it do its thing!

Once cooked, my runny mess turned into a delicious sauce. And the ribs came off the bone like butter.

Crappy picture by my husband. I was too busy shoving my piehole with this deliciousness to even bother taking a picture. I like some spice to my food. Not a lot because I don’t want to have my taste buds burned off, or have to suck down Tums or Prilosec after I eat. This had just enough heat to let me know it was there, but it was really about the flavor. Everyone in the house liked this (except my mother who does not eat ribs, weirdo).

It will definitely be in the mealtime rotation because it’s a great way to do ribs when you can’t do them on the grill. Just follow the directions, have a little faith and don’t mess with ’em!

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Robyn’s take:

I will be honest with y’all, when I looked at the list of ingredients and saw Catalina dressing on there, I was like “Uh… really?” Because while I like Catalina dressing on a salad (it’s what I always get at a salad bar!), I wouldn’t have guessed it to be a terrific ingredient when it comes to ribs. But then, I rarely make ribs and when I do, I toss them in the crock pot with BBQ sauce and call it good enough, so what do I know?

First of all, the recipe calls for “baby back ribs, cut in 1/2.” This sent me into a slight tizzy because we had ribs in the freezer – ribs from our very own pigs – but what was the difference between those ribs and baby back ribs? I decided to look at baby back ribs at the grocery store, and if there was some huge, visible difference between those and what we had on hand, I’d go with the baby back ribs. Well, I couldn’t find anything labeled “baby back ribs” at the grocery store, so using our own ribs was what I ended up doing.

Gratuitous ingredients shot:

(The low-sodium soy sauce is missing from this picture.)

Like Nance, I had no idea what Chili Garlic Sauce was. I got in my head that it was something I’d find in the marinade section. So I stood there for about ten minutes looking and looking for something that said Chili Garlic Sauce on it, and nothin’. I was getting frustrated and on the verge of texting Nance to be all “WTF?” when I remembered that I have a smart phone, so I Googled around and found that I’d do better off looking in the Asian section. I looked, and whattaya know, there it was. I think it’s funny that Nance and I both ended up with the exact same brand. Same brand of dressing, too! Here’s a handy tip when it comes to dressings (same holds true for cheeses) : reduced calorie is fine, but for god’s sake, don’t ever buy the fat free stuff. It tastes like plastic, and I am not even kidding you.

I actually had to broil my ribs in two batches, because I ended up with more than four pounds of ribs (and also, they weren’t cut in half like the recipe called for because I could only imagine that I’d have hacked my thumb off in the process).

I do actually have a broiling pan, aren’t you jealous? I’ve used it maybe three times, ever.

Nance’s idea of using a big measuring cup to mix up the sauce is a good one – I didn’t think of that, so I mixed everything up in a smallish bowl while the first batch of ribs were broiling. Then as I put each section of ribs into the crock pot, I poured some sauce over each, front and back, so I wouldn’t need to do any stirring.

I was afraid that the sauce wouldn’t thicken up, but right around 3 hours, it got nice and thick. I took my ribs out at the 3 1/2 hour mark to let them cool a bit, while I made our side dishes (rice and veggies).

As you can see, I put some of the sauce over my rice.

The verdict? Really, really good. Both Fred and I liked it a LOT. We don’t eat ribs very often, and in the past we’ve only eaten them because we had them in the freezer. I don’t know that we’re going to eat ribs more often in the future, but when we have them (I believe we’ve got another couple of packs of ribs left over from the previous pig), this is going to be the go-to recipe.

I love that we’re going to probably get another two meals out of this. The best part of living in a house with two people? You don’t have to cook as often!

Two thumbs up to the ribs. Obviously Nance needs to pick our recipes more often!

PS: I think a heaping tablespoon of minced garlic would have been a nice addition, too.

Hot Honeyed Spare Ribs

Original Source/Author: Sandra Lee

: Main

Ingredients

4 pounds baby back ribs, cut in ½
1 tablespoon garlic salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
½ cup honey
¼ cup low-sodium soy sauce
¼ cup chili garlic sauce
1 cup Catalina dressing
1 teaspoon ground ginger

Instructions

Preheat broiler. Line bottom portion of broiler pan with foil for easy clean up. Spray top rack lightly with cooking spray.
Season ribs with garlic salt and pepper. Broil for 5 to 6 minutes, turn and broil for an additional 5 to 6 minutes. Place browned ribs in slow cooker.
In a mixing bowl, stir together remaining ingredients. Pour sauce mixture over ribs. Move ribs around to make sure they are all coated. Cover and cook on High setting for 3 to 4 hours or Low for 8 hours.
With tongs, remove ribs from slow cooker and let cool slightly before cutting into individual rib pieces. Skim grease from sauce. Serve ribs with sauce on the side.

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Robyn & Nance try the same recipe – Honey Sauced Chicken

Posted on January 30, 2012 by admin

Every Monday, we’ll post a recipe that we both made. This week’s recipe was from Chelsea at Mmm…Cafe.

Nance’s take:

This week it was Robyn’s turn to pick the recipe. I was kind of nervous because I’m well aware that Robyn is a huge lover of vegetables. Now my favorite vegetable is corn (with lots of butter) with my second being potatoes (also with lots of butter). Robyn eats stuff like squash and okra on a regular basis (and she doesn’t even have the sense to deep fry it). I think you get where I’m coming from here. One of us is way more healthier than the other. Ahem. I was also in a tizzy because the only rule (for lack of a better word) that I dictated about this venture is no seafood (I hate seafood more than I hate my ex-husband and that’s saying some shit). Now before you all get yourselves into a snit please note that the rule is only for the tandem recipes. Miz Robyn may post as many seafood recipes as she would want on here. She just can’t make me cook them. Heh.

So the first recipe that Robyn threw at me: Some kind of garlic shrimp mess and OHHELLNO! I suppose I should add that I didn’t tell Robyn of the no seafood rule because I figured she would already know that…because we’re friends and friends don’t let friends eat stuff that lives in its own toilet! Some friend she is. Hmph.

After a flurry of emails denouncing seafood, etc., she sent me her second choice recipe. Honey Sauced Chicken. I was all happy because I like honey and I like chicken! And then I saw the soy sauce and I was all, “Oh, barf!” But I decided to suck it up because nobody likes a big baby (or a picky eater). Wah, wah, wah.

I’m one of those knuckleheads that only reads the ingredient list when looking at a recipe. The other stuff is what happens when you actually go to make it. So I never realized that it was supposed to be made in a crock-pot until about 5:30. Oops! Fortunately, she includes instructions on how to make it a 30 minute meal. So that’s what I did.

There are days when things that I do in the kitchen are effortless. And then there are days when it has to be a todo. Can you guess what day this was? I’ll give you a hint. Iced tea AND coffee cup sitting in my area. I was obviously having a time of it. And things didn’t get any better once I realized that I sprayed my dish with Pam…for baking! I wiped it out and started over. Sigh. The recipe doesn’t even call for doing that, but I wasn’t about to have a sticky (hello, honey!) mess all burned up in my dish (I tend to ignore things once I put them in the oven, including the oven timer at times, heh) so I took the extra precaution.

I also doubled the recipe (there are four of us eating). We (and by we I mean Rick because he’s the resident math dork over here) figured out that 3/4 of a pound of chicken doubled would be about two of those giant chicken breasts you get at Sam’s club.

I was an adult before I liked honey. Isn’t it weird how your taste changes over the years?

This is what it looked like before I put it in the oven. I have to admit I was a little nervous because I had visions of serving up a hearty bowl of soy soup.

I spooned it over rice and was pretty dubious about the whole mess because the sauce had not thickened like I expected it to. I had it in my head that it was going to be like Chinese take-out Sweet and Sour chicken. I then remembered once eating General Tso’s chicken over shredded lettuce so I decided to try it that way.

It was FABULOUS. And the rice eaters loved it too! Everyone agreed that it should go into our family meal rotation and that right there is a freaking miracle!

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Robyn’s Side

Okay, look. To be fair, when I suggested the garlic shrimp recipe to Nance, I DID say “I know you hate seafood, so probably not this one?”

I’m pretty sure that “lover of vegetables” is going to need to go on my tombstone because that cracked me up. I have a friend (this is not Nance I’m talking about, for the record) who eats vegetables so rarely that when she does, it’s a noteworthy event and a couple of weeks ago she posted on Facebook that she’d eaten a salad for dinner and we were all “!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Also, she loathes peas and considers their existence to be a personal affront.

Anyway.

I have a habit of seeing a recipe that looks interesting to me, and printing it out. I have a stack of recipes at least six inches high, dating back three or four years (every so often I go through them and admit that there are several that I’m never going to make), and so when it was my turn to choose a recipe, I grabbed my stack and picked one I thought Nance might be okay with.

(Fred is not super crazy about soy sauce, and since Nance and Fred think alike about MANY things – I’m pretty sure they were separated at birth – I wasn’t sure Nance would go for it. But she decided to be adventurous!)

Your ingredients:

I’d already chopped up the chicken (and salt and peppered it) earlier in the day because I like to get the annoying prep stuff done beforehand. 3/4 pounds of chicken breasts equaled three chicken breasts from our (free-range) chickens. You’ve also got honey (the big-ass bottle from Sam’s. How often do I use honey? How many years do you think I’ll be using honey from that bottle, for god’s sake? It’s already at least a year old! I love Sam’s, but there are some things a two-person household doesn’t really need to buy in bulk). There’s soy sauce, 1/8 cup chopped onion, ketchup, minced garlic, red pepper flakes, and the big-ass bottle of olive oil from Sam’s. The recipe calls for vegetable oil, but the generic “vegetable oil” we have on hand smells funny so I opted for the olive oil.

This recipe really could not be easier – put the chicken in the baking dish, mix up the sauce and pour it over, stick the whole thing in the oven.

(The recipe I printed out has crock pot instructions, but I’m trying to convince y’all that I can make dinner without using the crock pot, so I opted for the oven instructions.)

I hate handling raw chicken, by the way. It ooks me out.

Bake for 10 minutes, stir it, bake another 10, and voila it is ready. We had ours over angel hair.

Fred’s not a huge fan of rice, he’ll always prefer pasta if given the choice. I really like Nance’s idea of eating it over chopped lettuce and will probably give that a try next time around.

I really liked this a lot – Fred, on the other hand, was more lukewarm about it. I think he might like it more if the sauce was thicker, so next time I make it I’m going to add some cornstarch to the sauce and see if I can’t get it to thicken up a bit. If I can’t get him to like it as much as I do, I’ll likely add it to my own personal rotation and eat it for lunches during the week. Two thumbs up from me, and a “Meh” from Fred, that picky motherfucker.

Robyn & Nance try the same recipe - Honey Sauced Chicken

Prep time

5 mins

Cook time

20 mins

Total time

25 mins

Original Source/Author: Chelsea at mmmcafe.blogspot.com

: Entree, Main, Chicken

Serves: 2

Ingredients

¾ lb chicken (we used boneless skinless chicken breasts)
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp black pepper
½ c. honey
¼ c. soy sauce
⅛ c. chopped onion (or 1/16 c. onion flakes)
⅛ c. ketchup
1 T vegetable oil
1 clove minced garlic
¼ t red pepper flakes

Instructions

Season both sides of chicken with salt and pepper. Put into crock pot.
Mix remaining ingredients and pour over the chicken.
Cook on low for 3 hours or high 1½ hours.
Remove chicken from the crock pot, cut into bite sized pieces, then return to pot and toss with sauce.
Serve over rice or noodles or shredded lettuce.
Baking instructions:
Season chicken with salt and pepper; dice into bite-sized pieces.
Place chicken in 8x8 pan.
Mix remaining ingredients in small bowl; pour over chicken.
Bake at 350 for 20 minutes, stirring halfway through.

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Tag Archives: Crockpot

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Robyn & Nance try the same recipe – Honey Sauced Chicken