Crockpot Hawaiian Chicken

Crockpot Hawaiian Chicken

4-6 frozen chicken breasts

1 bottle Market Pantry (Target) Hawaiian BBQ Sauce

1 can crushed pineapple

Mix ingredients in crockpot and cook on low heat for 6-8 hours. Serve over rice.

The author of the blog that this pin came from originally has since deleted the post containing the recipe, but it was super basic and looked great so I decided to give it a try. We love chicken. We love BBQ sauce. We love pineapple. We did not love this recipe! I think there are 2 main reasons that this did not turn out well. In my crockpot experience I have learned that some BBQ sauces taste much better than others after slow cooking. In general honey and hickory sauces do better, while plain BBQ sauces tend to taste a little more "over-done" or almost a bit burned after 6+ hours of cooking.

This particular sauce had bits of fruit in the sauce- hence the "Hawaiian" label. It also had some kick to it which intensified greatly after its time in the slow cooker. The end result was a very moist and tender chicken, but the sauce had become a bitter, spicy, mushy disaster.

I will definitely try this recipe again, but will we use our tried and true Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce and will try pineapple chunks instead of crushed to make the sauce less mushy! Looking forward to giving it another go and seeing how it turns out next time. Cooking is always an adventure!

What really happened...

So last week's menu didn't really work out as planned- life happens! This is what it looked like in reality:

18 BBQ Roast

19 Taco Rice

20 take-out (family night @ book fair till 7)

21 Jason ate a sandwich at home and I went out w/my friend Angie

22 Spaghetti (whole wheat noodles w/marinara sauce) Green beans Pears

23 Shrimp & pirogies sautéed with onions

24 Leftovers

We did have the slow cooker tex-mex chicken today, but I added and subbed a few things to make do with what I could find in the pantry and to make enough leftovers for at least 2 days worth of lunches! I've updated the recipe link to reflect the changes.

Cooking Fail

In the past I have made some things before that looked horrible, but tasted just fine. This might just be the first time that the exact opposite happened. Looked fine, tasted awful!

So a little while ago we finished up a late lunch/early dinner of the crock-pot taco soup, topped with a few crushed tortilla chips, shredded cheese, and a dollop of sour cream- super YUM! I was feeling pretty energetic so I thought I'd get back in the kitchen and whip up some no-bake cookies for Jason since he's not feeling well. While I was gathering my ingredients I saw the big bag of granulated Splenda in the pantry, and thought "Hmmm... you can use Splenda in baking and such- why not in no-bake cookies? Let's give it a whirl."

...

So I continued making the cookies as usual, substituting the Splenda for sugar. Everything looked great- the cocoa mixture cooked up just fine, smelled fine, looked fine. Mixed in the vanilla, peanut butter and oats. Spooned it all out on the cookie racks. Everything was peachy.

Then I licked the spoon. MISTAKE! Argh! I can't even descibe what they tasted like- nothing remotely edible. Jason came in the kitchen looking for his favorite cookies and all I could do was laugh. He was like, "What? Do they taste different?" I said, "Well see for yourself."

Let's just say I let him do the honors of laying the cookies to rest in the trash can. And the worst part is now he is sad that there are no cookies, and I can't muster up any motivation to make them the right way. Maybe later on...