Chicken in Honey Sauce

I've been pretty busy finishing up fellowship and grant applications and actually finding time to work on my dissertation, so my blogging has been set aside a bit. Since this week is spring break, I thought I'd take this time to catch up a little bit.

About a year ago (7 March 2012), I made this really easy "Chicken in Honey Sauce" from the Crock Pot Best Loved Slow Cooker Recipes Cookbook. I love really quick and easy recipes for the crock pot because I generally don't have much time in the morning if I'm going to school so something I can just throw together is key. This is that type of recipe. You put chicken breasts (boneless, skinless) into the crock pit and season with some salt and pepper.

Then you mix together honey, soy sauce, ketchup, oil, and garlic and pour it over the chicken. That's everything in terms of prep. It cooks on low 6-8 hours or high 3-4 hours. Another thing about this recipe is that it doesn't have anything that will go bad or you can't freeze beforehand, so if it turns out you're not going to make it the week you buy the ingredients, that's ok. I actually got most of the ingredients for this mid-February 2012, but didn't make it until March. And I know the date that I made it because I have the receipt from when I noticed that I didn't have enough honey and had to run out that morning to get some.

This is what it looked like before turning it on.

And this is what it looked like when it was done cooking.

I copied the picture in the cookbook and served it with a vegetable and rice (though not the vegetable or rice in the picture. The cookbook recommends that you "garnish with sesame seeds before serving," but not having sesame seeds on hand and not wanting to buy some just to garnish this dish, I left that step out. Now, as you can see from the picture from the cookbook (below), mine looks nothing like the chicken that they picture in the cookbook. This is another reason why I think that the food that they use in their images wasn't actually cooked in a crock pot.

Now, this dish seems like it's high calorie, but it's mostly because of the ingredients in the sauce, and you don't eat all the sauce. But, not taking that into account, if you have one breast per serving like the book suggests, it comes out to 611 calories per serving. Of course, you can load your plate up on veggies and have only half a breast, like I did, and it would be only 305 calories per serving. In terms of cost, this is great for stretching your stipend. If you have only half a breast per serving, you end up only paying $2.58 per serving ($5.16 if you have a whole breast) and you have more than enough food to last you into the following week. Of course, I didn't have to buy everything for this, so I paid $1.85 per serving for the half-breast size serving and $3.70 per serving for the whole-breast size serving. So this is good for stretching your stipend and it's really good too. I noted in the cookbook that it was "very tasty" and that my husband gave it an "A-."  Not an A, but still pretty good.

Chicken and Sweet Potato Stew

I'm posting another old recipe today, from the Crock Pot Slow Cooker Best-Loved Recipes Cookbook.  On October 4, 2011, I made the Chicken and Sweet Potato Stew recipe. When I think about stew, I always think of my mother's beef stew, but this is an interesting alternative.

It's also really easy to make because you just throw everything together into the crock pot.  The only thing then that takes time is cutting everything into cubes for the stew: boneless, skinless chicken breasts, peeled sweet potatoes, peeled Yukon Gold potatoes, and carrots.

You also add a large can of whole stewed tomatoes (undrained), spices (salt, paprika, celery seeds, pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg), and fat-free, low-sodium chicken broth. I didn't add the salt, as usual. You mix it all together and then cook it, either on low for six to eight hours or on high for three to four hours.

This is what it looks like before turning it on.

And this is what it looks like after cooking.

The recipe suggests that you serve it sprinkled with chopped fresh basil, but I skipped this -- not on purpose actually, I just fotgot.  So I just served the stew with a salad, which made a perfect meal. It actually came out not that unlike the picture in the cookbook, as you can see by comparing it with the picture below. The recipe makes about six servings, which makes it only about 207 calories per serving. With a salad, the meal is only around 350 calories. Thus, you could easily add some bread or something to make it more substantial -- or have seconds.

It's also pretty cheap to make, which is awesome for the grad student budget -- especially for 2011 when my husband and I were both in school. If you had to purchase everything, it would only be about $5.33 per serving.  Of course, I already had some of the spices, so I only spent about $3.85 per serving. And this was really good! As I mentioned at the beginning, this was a yummy alternative to the standard beef stew. I highly recommend it: it's tasty, cheap, and super easy to make.

Three-Bean Turkey Chili

This is another post of some of my old recipes, from November 3, 2011. I still cannot find my charger for my camera and there are a ton of more recent pictures on there. Alas.

So, I love making chili in the crock pot because it's basically what it was designed to do -- I mean, you can cook anything in a crock pot, but soups, stews, and chilies definitely come out the best. This Three-Bean Turkey Chili is from the Crock Pot Slow Cooker Best-Loved Recipes cookbook. This might actually be the first recipe I'm posting from there! The cookbook is good, but there are definitely some overlaps with the Crock Pot Incredibly Easy Recipes cookbook.

This is amazingly easy. Basically, you brown ground turkey and chopped onion on the stove and then put it into the crock pot after draining off the fat. Then you add everything else: diced tomatoes, chickpeas, kidney beans, black beans, tomato sauce, diced green chilies, and chili powder. What makes this super easy, is that all those ingredients are canned, leaving only the ground turkey and onion for the cook to prepare. Anyway,  you stir everything together, then cook it on high for 6 to 8 hours.

This is what it looked like before turning it on.

This is what it looked like when it was finished cooking.

You definitely want to stir the chili when it's done before serving.

Now, while the chili was cooking, I made cornbread from a Trader Joe's mix and I ended up serving the chili with cornbread and a salad. Great meal. Of course, the cornbread doubles the amount of calories in the meal, but it was so yummy! I wrote in my cookbook that this was a "really good, solid chili" and to "serve with cornbread."

So the recipe says that it makes 6 to 8 servings. For 8 servings, then, the calorie count for the chili alone is 285. Since a serving of the cornbread is 290 calories, that makes the total, including salad, about 725 calories. Not bad. For 6 servings, you have 380 calories for the chili alone and 820 for the whole meal. Without the cornbread, this is pretty low-calorie chili.

I chose to make this because I already had black beans, chickpeas, ground turkey, and chili powder on hand. Thus, for 8 servings I would have only paid $1.09 per serving, and that includes the cornbread! For 6 servings it's not much more: $1.45 per serving. Of course, if you had to get everything, it'd be $2.52 per serving for 8 servings and $3.35 per serving for 6. (Without the cornbread, it'd be $2.18 per serving for 8 servings and $2.91 per serving for 6.) Of course, and I can't believe that I haven't said this on the blog yet, but YMMV depending on what part of the country you live in -- food could be more or less expensive there. Regardless, with this chili you can have a nice, healthy meal for less than $5 per serving!