Cooked in a thick Asian glaze, this honey garlic chicken breast recipe uses skinless boneless chicken breasts to make a healthy fall-apart tender, easy dinner to combine with rice and vegetables.
Introduction
Crock pot honey garlic chicken is a “toss it in the pot” and come back in a few hour type meal than needs no special ingredients. Just follow the easy step by step photo instructions for one of the best crock pot chicken recipes.
It is low fat and bursting with a wonderful taste. It is easy to modify by adding some vegetables and increasing the sauce for a more complete meal.
Based on an Allrecipe.com chicken thigh recipe. This was originally a much larger, chicken thigh recipe. I cut it down and changed to skinless boneless chicken breast.
My Rating
A solid 4.
🐓The Chicken
The original recipe uses chicken thighs, but I changed that to make it a crock pot chicken breast recipe.
Serve with rice and use the sauce as gravy. There is enough "sauce" to cook more meat. Perhaps twice as much, but you may want more sauce for rice during serving.
Add some veggies: Oriental veggies would go great with this. Put them in the cooker the last hour or so.
🥣The Sauce
If you want more sauce, add a half to a full cup of water. Or double all ingredients.
If you want the sauce to be thicker, then add a tablespoon of cornstarch to 2 tablespoons water and add near the end of cooking. If you are planning to reheat or freeze, do not thicken with cornstarch. It does not reheat or freeze well.
Double the thickening solution if you add a cup of water. Add the water will dilute the taste some, but there is a lot of taste, and deleting some will be fine.
A sodium note. The original recipe had a half cup of soy sauce. That was heavy on the salt. I receive a lot of complaints (see comments) and now suggest only ¼ cup of low sodium soy sauce.
♨️The Crock Pot
This recipe, as written, fits nicely in any crock pot that is 2 quarts or larger.
A bit of caution, though. Mini crock pots are well known for having poor heat control, and if you use a large crock pot, due to the lack of significant mass, the cooking time will be less.
This recipe is ready to serve when the internal temperature of the chicken is 165°. That is the minimum safe temperature for chicken. If you use thighs, you will be happier with the texture if the internal temperature of about 180°.
A double size recipe fits in 3 ½ quart and larger.
🖊️Other Notes
Adding vegetables: This is a great recipe to add other vegetables like frozen mix vegetables, broccoli, or any other of your favorites. You will need to increase the sauce and use a bigger crock pot. Add your vegetables for the last hour of cooking.
Increasing the sauce: Just double all the sauce ingredients, or you could add ½ to 1 cup of water. There is so much taste, it will be fine with just the water. It is useful t,o have more "gravy" for rice and to cook vegetables.
Storage
Good refrigerated for 3-4 days and frozen for 3-4 months. I do not suggest freezing cooked rice since it affects the texture.
📖Related Recipes
Sesame Pork Ribs in the Crock Pot
Crock Pot Beef and Broccoli
Easy Fried Rice in 10 Minute
Easy General Tso Chicken
🖼️Photo Instructions
Just pantry staples you already have.
Start with 1 ½ to 2 pounds of skinless boneless chicken breast cut into 4-6 pieces. You may use chicken thighs if you wish.
Combine ½ cup of ketchup, ¼ cup soy sauce (low sodium preferred), ¼ cup honey, four cloves crushed garlic, and ½ teaspoon basil. Whisk together.
Spread the chicken across the bottom of a slow cooker. Add the sauce. This is a 3 ½ qt, but big should be ok especially if cooking a larger amount.
Cook on low for 3-4 hours. You want an internal temperature of 165 or above.
Serve with rice and use the sauce as gravy.
Do you want more recipes from 101 Cooking for Two? Sign up for the newsletter and get all posts delivered straight to your inbox!
📖 Recipe
Crock Pot Honey Garlic Chicken Breast
Tap to leave a Rating
Ingredients
- 1 ½ pounds skinless boneless chicken breasts - Cut into 4-6 pieces. May use thighs.
- ½ cup ketchup
- ¼ cup soy sauce - low sodium preferred
- ¼ cup honey
- 2-4 cloves garlic - crushed
- ½ teaspoon basil - to taste
Instructions
- Start with 1 ½ to 2 pounds of skinless boneless chicken breast cut into 4-6 pieces. You may use chicken thighs if you wish.
- Combine ½ cup of ketchup, ¼ cup soy sauce (low sodium preferred), ¼ cup honey, 2-4 cloves crushed garlic and ½ teaspoon basil. Whisk together.
- Spread the chicken across the bottom of a slow cooker. Add the sauce. This is a 3 ½ qt, but big should be ok especially if cooking a larger amount.
- Cook on low for 3-4 hours. You want an internal temperature on the chicken of 165.
- Serve with rice and veggies.
Recipe Notes
Pro Tips:
- Use low sodium soy sauce.
- Will fit nicely in a 2 qt or bigger crock pot. Double recipe will need 3 ½ quart or larger. If you add vegetables, you will also need to increase the crock pot size.
- "Mini" crock pots tend to have temperature control problems. Also, cooking in a large crock pot can cook faster due to the small size of the recipe.
- Add the extra water to have more sauce if serving with rice and veggies. Or just double the sauce ingredients.
- Add veggies for the last hour of cooking. This can increase cooking time.
- Cook to an internal temperature of 165 for the chicken. This can vary with size of chicken pieces and your crock pot. The final safe internal tempature of chicken is 165°. If using thighs, you will be happier with the texture of the chicken if you cook to about 180°.
- Several want the liquid thicker at the end of cooking. You can thicken it some with cornstarch. Try one tablespoon cornstarch in two tablespoons of cool water mix well then add to the liquid in the pot about 30 minutes before completing and turn up to high. Cornstarch does not do well when reheated or frozen.
- Good refrigerated for 3-4 days. Good frozen for 3-4 months but cooked rice does not freeze well.
TO ADJUST THE RECIPE SIZE:
You may adjust the number of servings in this recipe card under servings. This does the math for the ingredients for you. BUT it does NOT adjust the text of the instructions. So you need to do that yourself.
Nutrition
© 101 Cooking for Two, LLC. All content and photographs are copyright protected by us or our vendors. While we appreciate your sharing our recipes, please realize copying, pasting, or duplicating full recipes to any social media, website, or electronic/printed media is strictly prohibited and a violation of our copyrights. Please see Copyright Policy for details.
Originally Published January 4, 2015. Updated with expanded options, refreshed photos, and a table of contents to help navigation.
Paul D.
Fantastic recipe! My family loves it. My wife thinks I'm a genius, lol. I added chopped red, yellow, and orange bell pepper to the sauce and it was fantastic. I see a lot of comments about the sauce being a bit watery. My suggestion would be to use a fresh, dark honey in the recipe. The viscosity of the dark honey holds up better in the slow cooker. Just a suggestion. I'm lucky enough to live in the country, so it's readily available. If people have access to a farmer's market, you can probably find it there. My family wants me to make it again, so great job!