I've been wanting to post about this recipe for a while now. It's been on my menu plan for several weeks in a row and for one reason or another I never got around to preparing it.
Even when I made this a couple of weeks ago, it almost didn't happen! I thawed out a large pack of split chicken breast only to remember that frozen chicken works best with this recipe.
The thawed chicken turned into oven-barbecued chicken using my recipe for
homemade barbecue sauce (recipe for the sauce can be found on
my other blog) and then the leftovers turned into Barbecue Chicken Salad. I love when a mistake works out like that!
Anyway, I was determined to make the Crock Pot Applesauce Chicken and decided that it would be a perfect meal for Saturday. Joe was working and Grace and I were planning on spending some time outside playing.
I was so glad that I re-scheduled the crock pot meal for that day. Joe usually bathes Grace right after dinner while I clean up the dinner dishes. But he unexpectedly ended up having to work very late and wasn't home for dinner or bathtime.
That entire scenario could have turned out very stressful if I had to prepare dinner after coming in from playing, then bathtime, then clean up. But since I prepared the meal earlier in the day, I was able to relieve some of that meal time/bathtime stress.
Clean up was easy too, since I decided (after finding out that we'd be dining alone) that I'd just heat up some leftover mac and cheese instead of making the mashed sweet potatoes I had planned for the meal.
It really seemed like this meal wasn't meant to be. But I'm glad I stuck with it and still made it anyway. We had the leftovers on Monday and Grace really seemed to enjoy the sweet applesauce covered chicken!
Okay, so for the recipe details....
I originally saw
this recipe on "The Crock Pot Lady's"
Blog and knew it would be a great meal for the fall or winter. In fact, I have made this before during the winter that I was pregnant with Grace. But knowing how much Grace likes to eat chicken and apples, I thought that this would be the perfect meal for her!
As usual, I made a change or two to the original recipe. I followed it pretty closely to the one linked above. But mostly, I just doubled the sauce since the split breasts I used were pretty big.
Here's what I did:
Crock Pot Applesauce Chicken
Ingredients:
- 6 frozen bone-in split chicken breast
- 3 cups of applesauce
- 1 1/2 yellow onions, finely diced
- 2 Tbs. apple cider vinegar
- 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
- 1 tsp. black pepper
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes
Directions:
- Place frozen chicken in crockpot.
- Mix remaining ingredients (except onions) in a bowl.
- Add onion to sauce, mix and pour over the chicken.
- Cover and cook on low for 5-7 hours or high for 3-4 hours.
Notes:
- Although, I gave you the recipe with the sauce measurements doubled, I didn't intend to double the sauce. But after I mixed it up and poured it over my chicken, it didn't look like it would be enough. I was afraid the chicken would turn out too dry without enough liquid. I'm glad I doubled it, since each piece of chicken was a little less than a pound.
- I added more cinnamon than the recipe states. After mixing up the ingredients for the sauce I sprinkled and mixed in more cinnamon. I did that for both batches of the sauce that I made.
- I want to share a crazy random thought I had while sprinkling in all of that cinnamon. I felt like Laura Ingalls when she added all that red pepper to Nelly's cinnamon chicken that she served to Almanzo! Can you tell I watched lots of Little House episodes on the Hallmark channel during my pregnancy with Grace?!
I'll be linking this post to the following blogs:
6 comments:
The recipe looks great. I love using my crock pot! Thanks for linking to TMTT.
Yes, I've made this and it is yummy. Your photos are great!
Looks yummy and I like crock pot ideas.
that just looks divine! I'm going to try that!
That sounds really, really nice. I like the addition of the cider vinegar - vinegar gives such great flavour to dishes.
This sounds so interesting--I'm trying to cook all the stuff in my chest freezer so that I can defrost and clean it, and I have several chicken breasts I can use to make this, as well as a large jar of cinnamon applesauce! Saturday's dinner can be cooking while we're relaxing and enjoying ourselves!
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