SlowCooker Sweet and Tangy Chicken

When Bryan and I got married a little over two years ago, I was shocked and so excited at the number of kitchen gadgets we received as gifts! While we had just moved from a 535 sq ft efficiency (yep, us and both the dogs and all our stuff--it was cosy!) into a 1 bed-room apartment, we still did not have enough room for all of our wedding presents. Many ended up collecting dust in the storage closet.

Then, 7 months later, we moved into our wonderful house! I was so excited--finally, I could start using all of my shinies! And by now, I have used most of them. Until yesterday, however, one of the exception was my shiny crockpot with removable ceramic bowl! I finally took this bad boy out of it's box (and Styrofoam and plastic wrap) and fired it up to make my planned Tuesday night dinner--SlowCooker Sweet and Tangy Chicken!

I found this recipe over on Beth's blog, Beth's Favorite Recipes.  She posts a different recipe everyday, and all the ones I have tried have been fantastic!

The very first thing was to get out my Crock Pot booklet and RTFI, as my hubby would say.  (For those of you unfamiliar with this acronym, in means Read The F***ing Instructions lol).  I then moved on to tackling the recipe!

Head's up:  This recipe takes 8 to 9 hours to cook, so plan prep time accordingly!  I cut it too close, and ended up having to move dinner back 30 minutes lol.

Ingredients:
4-8 skinless boneless chicken breasts
1 18 ounce bottle honey flavored barbecue sauce
1 20 ounce can pineapple chunks with juice
1 green bell pepper -- chopped ( Beth used 1/2 red and 1/2 green for color)
1 onion -- chopped
2 cloves garlic -- minced

I used 6 chicken breasts total for this meal.  We were having Bouncer and Alicia over for dinner, so I wanted to make sure we had enough.  The first step was to prepare half of the chicken breasts to go into the crock pot.  The recipe gave to options--divide the chicken breasts into halves OR cube them.  I was cutting it close as far as the cooking start time went, so I figured cubing them would be the better option (cubed chicken cooks faster, at least in my limited experience). 

Granted, calling what I did "cubing" is probably being generous.  Correctly cut cubes of chicken are about 1-inch, well, cubes.  My weren't anywhere so neat.  Let's call what I did "chunking" chicken.Once I had three chicken breasts chunked, I put the meat in the bottom of the crock pot. 

Next, I mixed up the sauce.  First came the 18 ounces of honey barbecue sauce.

Then the 20 ounce can of pineapple chunks with juice.  I made sure to buy the can that had REAL juice in it, instead of syrup.  I'm sure the syrup would have made for a thicker, sweeter sauce, but I didn't want it to be too sweet.  As it was, it turned out plenty sweet with just the juice, so success!

Next I chopped up the green bell pepper and the onion and added them into the sauce.  I chose not to use half green, half red because, frankly, the red bell peppers were more expensive at the store that day, and I wasn't all that worried about color. 

I spooned in the two cloves of minced garlic.  For the record, 1 clove of garlic equals about half a tablespoon.  (Yes, I know it says it on the jar, but I can't tell you the number of times I've forgotten that it does and spent ten minutes trying to figure out the conversion! lol).  Using a wooden spoon, I mixed everything together thoroughly.

The next step is to pour HALF of the sauce into the crock pot, on top of the layer of chicken.  Then, you get to divide or cube (or chunk!) the remaining chicken breasts.  Put that meat on top of the sauce layer, and then dump the rest of the sauce in on top! 

Set your crock pot to low, and set the timer for somewhere between 8-9 hours.  I ended up cooking mine (remember, I chunked the chicken to help it cook faster) for 8 hours and 15 minutes, and it was wonderful!

I served it on top of Uncle Ben's 90 second rice (whoop! for easy rice!) alongside green beans.  I would advise getting at least 3 bags of the instant rice--I only grabbed two and it was JUST enough.  Everyone seemed to enjoy it...I know I did!  And the great thing?  Even after feeding four people (with one person going back for seconds) we still have leftovers! 

*My husband is sticking is tongue out at the camera, not the food!  I promise!  lol