Honey Lemon Crock Pot Chicken

written by cookeatlove on April 21, 2011 in The Main Course with 14 comments

My house smells heavenly right now.  It is filled with lemon, thyme, honey and garlic.  The best part is that all the work is done at 10am in the morning and my chicken dish can cook all day long creating layer upon layer of flavor.  A couple of years ago I made Gordon Ramsay’s Sticky Lemon Chicken and my kids LOVED it.  I decided to try another variation on this and the result was biblical goodness. The key for me is to use all fresh ingredients if you can.  If not, you can substitute dry thyme and rosemary.  The great think about a crock pot though is that you can be inventive and add whatever you want to your whole chicken.   You can throw a bunch of stuff you love into a crock pot like carrots, ginger, lime, mushrooms,  whatever you fancy and just layer the bottom of the pot with onion and cook it for 4-6 hours.  Dinner done.  The chicken stock I add in this recipe is not necessary, you can add just the chicken and it will produce enough juices on it’s own to make it tender.  Just make sure your chicken is completely thawed and is going from refrigerator to crock pot.  If you are really pressed for time you can even skip the step that calls for you to brown your chicken first.  Don’t be a perfectionist, just get dinner made!

Ingredients:

• handful of fresh thyme leaves
• A couple of sprigs of fresh rosemary
• 1 1/2 lemons
• 2 heads of garlic peeled and and separated into cloves
• 2 medium onions
• sea salt
• fresh pepper
• 1/4 cup of honey
• 1/4 cup of chicken stock

For the sauce:

• 2 tbsp cornstarch
• 1/4 cup of cold water

 

Rinse and dry your chicken.  Rub the chicken with olive oil and season with sea salt and fresh pepper.   Get a fry pan, drizzle with some more olive oil and let it get really hot (somewhere between medium and high).  Fry chicken on both sides to get a nice golden color all over the chicken. Put half an onion inside the cavity of the chicken as well as half a lemon and 6 garlic cloves whole.

Cut up an onion on the thicker side as well as  one lemon.  Take a whole head of garlic and remove the skin but leave the garlic whole.  Get a handful of fresh thyme and rosemary.  Put the sliced onion on the bottom of the crock pot.  Add the chicken to the crock pot breast side up.  Sprinkle the chicken with the thyme .  Cover the chicken with more onion slices, lemon slices and garlic.  Finally, pour 1/4 cup of honey all over the top of the chicken and 1/4 of chicken stock to the bottom of the crock pot.  Cook  on high for 1 hour then turn to low for 4-5 more hours.  When there is one hour of cooking left add rosemary to the crock pot-just throw it in there.

When chicken is done you can do a few things.  You can broil it in the oven to get some color and crispness to the skin.  The chicken from the crock pot is so tender that it won’t dry it out.  You can arrange the chicken on a plate as is and enjoy.  Here is an important part though.  The cooking juices from the chicken are sooo tasty.  What I do is strain the juice into a pot and add a mixture of 2 tbsp of cornstarch with 1/4 of cold water.  Bring the strained juices to a boil and add the cornstarch a bit at a time until your desired thickness.  Pour this over the chicken before serving.  Add fresh lemons and thyme for presentation.

Doesn’t this look yummy?  Look at that nice sauce poured over the chicken.

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