Honey Bourbon Slow Cooker Chicken.

Sounds delicious and easy, right?

It’s both.

I wanted to share this recipe with you so you can use this as a go to when you don’t have too much time to spend in the kitchen.

Typically I’m in the kitchen at leas 5-6 days a week. We do take one or two days off and go out to eat, thanks to so many of the amazing healthy options popping up all over our city! Can you say Mod Market? Delicious.

Yet, for the most part, I like to make our dinners and make them “from scratch”. I’m not into boxed or bagged dinners, nor do we turn to frozen foods either. We tend to keep it fresh, simple and clean.

Last week was going to be busy for me, but I didn’t want to resort to eating out too much, then eating too much crap.

Yes, I just said crap.

So, I skimmed through a couple new ebooks I got recently from the soon-coming Ultimate Bundles: Homemaking Edition and found some tasty sounding premade freezer slow cooker meals.

I’m all for the slow cooker. Makes life so easy sometimes.

I picked two recipes that I knew I could get my family to eat and got busy.

It took less than 10 minutes to prepare both of them.

So awesome.

Throw all the ingredients in a bag, put that bag in the freezer, then take it out the night before I need it. Just stick it in the slow cooker and you’re good to go. I made some rice and cooked some broccoli and in no time, this was a meal that everyone loved, by the way. Now, since my week so super busy, I didn’t make the rice from scratch like I usually do, so I purchased organic rice pilaf from Whole Foods and it worked fine. Organic broccoli, some cheddar cheese and the meal was complete.

This recipe is adapted from Crockpot Chicken Freezer Meals by New Leaf Wellness. I tweaked the recipe around a little bit to work with our eating habits and dietary preferences. Don’t let the long list of ingredients fool you into thinking it’s a lot. It isn’t and it goes together so quickly.

Honey Bourbon Chicken

Yields: 6 servings

What You Need:

– 2 pounds boneless skinless chicken thighs (it called for chicken breast, but darker meat offers more nutrition)

– 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes

– 5 cloves of garlic, minced

– 2 tablespoons honey (maple syrup would work too)

– 1/4 cup ketchup

– 1/4 cup coconut aminos (it called for soy sauce, but we try to stay away from soy as much as possible) 

– 1/4 cup light brown sugar

– 1/2 cup plain kombucha (it called for apple juice, but I didn’t have any so I used some of our homemade kombucha instead) 

– 1/4 cup brandy (it called for bourbon, but we don’t drink alcohol and the only alcohol I have in the house is brandy for when I make vanilla extract…Tip: You can substitute with 1/4 cup apple juice.)

– 3 tablespoons arrowroot powder (it called for corn starch, but we don’t consume a lot of corn products, so I always use arrowroot in place it corn starch in recipes)

What You Do:

1 gallon-sized plastic freezer bag 

1. Label your freezer bag with the meal name and put a date on it. I did two of these at a time and figured I didn’t need to label them, threw them in the freezer when I was done and didn’t think twice about it. Then when I went to get one of them out, they looked identical, so I wasn’t sure which was which – hence, labeling the bag :o)

2. Add all ingredients to your freezer bag. Sit the bag inside a large mixing bowl so it doesn’t fall over.

3. Remove as much air as possible, seal, and freeze for up to three months. Again, why labeling is so important.

How To Cook:

1. Take out the bag the night before you want to cook it and let it thaw in the fridge.

2. Add contents of freezer bag to slow cooker and cook on “low” setting for 4-6 hours in a 6-quart slow cooker or 8 hours in a 4-quart slow cooker. Some slow cookers definitely cook hotter than others, so if yours is one of those, watch the cook time!

3. About an hour before you’re going to eat, remove the chicken and shred it, then put it back into the slow cooker!

4. This chicken is good served with rice and a veggie! And always add some cheese on top. Always.

 

Doesn’t this sound easy and delicious? It is! The other one I made, “White Chicken Chili” was amazing and I’ll share that one later this week. Don’t worry, you can snag your own copy of this wonderful ebook along with about 90 others, all for under $30 very shortly! Stay tuned for info on how you can do that! You won’t want to miss this deal! OR all the delicious recipes it contains – which by the way happens to be a total of 1240 recipes. Yes, you read that right! Not to mention 44 weeks of different meal plans.

Wow. Okay. If that alone isn’t worth it. So, stay tuned for when this bundle goes “live” and grab it as fast as you can!

I need to go cook more food!

Live on Purpose!

xo Kari