Crock Pot Honey Garlic Chicken is an easy chicken thigh recipe infused with honey, garlic, and soy sauce.
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The Best Honey Garlic Chicken Crock Pot Recipe
Does your family feel like they’re always eating soup or stew when it comes to the crockpot? This recipe will completely change their minds. These chicken thighs are cooked in a sweet, sticky glaze.
Serve it over rice with broccoli or green beans and it’ll be a new go-to family favorite. Your family will be requesting this for dinner.
Ingredients for Slow Cooker Honey Garlic Chicken Thighs
see below for substitutions
- Boneless Skinless Chicken Thighs
- Honey
- Low Sodium Soy Sauce
- Ketchup
- Avocado Oil
- Minced Garlic
- Red Pepper Flakes
- Salt and Pepper
How to Make Crock Pot Honey Garlic Chicken
Detailed instructions and measurements to make crock pot honey garlic chicken are listed in the recipe card at the bottom of this page.
- Trim the majority of the fat from the thighs and place them in the crockpot. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
- In a separate mixing bowl, combine the honey, soy sauce, ketchup, avocado oil, garlic, and red pepper flakes. Mix until well combined.
- Pour the mix over the chicken thighs.
- Cook on LOW for 3 ½ hours. Once down, be sure to turn and coat the thighs in the sauce.
- *optional* To thicken the sauce, pour the it into a saucepan and bring it to a boil. Let it simmer over medium heat until it has thickened (about 5 minutes). I personally prefer this method.
- Serve over rice with green beans or broccoli.
How to Serve Crock Pot Sweet Garlic Chicken
Honey Garlic Chicken goes great over rice. You can use basmati rice, cauliflower rice, or even fried rice. It also pairs well with green vegetables like broccoli and green beans.
Crock Pot Honey Garlic Chicken Tips
- Be sure to trim the majority of the fat from the thighs. Not only does it make a weird texture to bite into, but it will make your sauce greasy.
- If you’re avoiding soy or what to lower the sodium content, you can replace the soy sauce with aminos.
- For extra spice, add sriracha to the sauce along with the red pepper flakes.
- For a thicker sauce, once the chicken has cooked through add it to a saucepan and simmer it until it thickens. Then pour the sauce back over the chicken.
Honey Garlic Chicken Thighs Crock Pot FAQs
You can substitute the boneless, skinless chicken thighs for boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Be sure to trim the excess fat and adjust the cooking time.
Chicken thighs naturally have excess fat on them. Biting into a large chunk of fat is extremely unpleasant. The excess fat will also cause the sauce to be greasy.
Healthy is a subjective term, but the recipe doesn't contain any weird or overly processed ingredients. It's easily adjusted to most diets.
You can stack chicken thighs in the crock pot. They may need additional cooking time.
Chicken thighs need to be cooked on low for 4 hours or high for 2-3 hours in the crock pot.
You can put frozen chicken in the slow cooker, but it will need longer to cook.
You can cook raw chicken pieces in a slow cooker. Be sure that it is cooked until the internal temperature reaches 165°F.
Chicken breast should be cooked on low in a slow cooker for 4 hours.
Chicken does not get more tender the longer you cook it in a crock pot. When chicken is overcooked in the crock pot, it will be less tender and begin to have a different texture and flavor.
Garlic Honey Chicken Crock Pot Substitutions
Chicken thighs - these can be replaced with boneless, skinless chicken breasts, but the cooking time will need to be adjusted
Honey - I don’t recommend substituting or replacing this
Low sodium soy sauce - if you’re avoiding soy or even want to just lower the sodium further, you can replace the soy sauce with coconut aminos or liquid aminos
Ketchup - while the ketchup is going to give you the best flavor, if you really don’t want to use it, you can use tomato sauce instead.
Avocado oil - you can replace this with any oil you like, just be sure it’s a neutral-tasting oil
Garlic - if you use pre-minced garlic, you may want to add a little extra because it isn’t as strong of a flavor
Red Pepper Flakes - if you want to omit the spice entirely, you can leave these out. If you want to bump the spice up, add sriracha as well.
how to make honey garlic chicken breast
If you prefer to use chicken breasts instead of thighs, you'll want to trim the excess fat from the chicken breasts. Once you've trimmed the excess fat, add them to the crockpot and proceed with the recipe as written.
When it comes to cooking time, you'll likely need to increase the overall time to 4-6 hours on LOW depending on the size of the chicken breasts.
How to Store, Freeze, and Reheat Honey Garlic Chicken
The leftovers of this recipe can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. Reheat leftovers on the stove, in the oven, or in the microwave.
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Honey Garlic Chicken Crock Pot Recipe
Equipment
Ingredients
- 2 pounds boneless skinless chicken thighs
- 1 cup honey
- ½ cup low sodium soy sauce
- ¼ cup ketchup
- 2 tablespoons avocado oil
- 2 tablespoons minced garlic
- ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
- salt and pepper
Instructions
- Trim the majority of the fat from the thighs and place them in the crockpot. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
- In a separate mixing bowl, combine the honey, soy sauce, ketchup, avocado oil, garlic, and red pepper flakes. Mix until well combined.
- Pour the mix over the chicken thighs.
- Cook on LOW for 3 ½ hours. Once down, be sure to turn and coat the thighs in the sauce.
- *optional* To thicken the sauce, pour the it into a saucepan and bring it to a boil. Let it simmer over medium heat until it has thickened (about 5 minutes). I personally prefer this method.
- Serve over rice with green beans or broccoli.
Nutrition
Nutritional information is provided as a courtesy. It should only be used for estimation purposes and is not a guarantee of any kind. Nutritional information varies widely between brands and types of ingredients used. It is recommended that you calculate the nutritional information based on your own ingredients and brands used. Sweetly Splendid, LLC makes no guarantees as to the exact nutrition information.
Diane Rumbold
Hi, I am trying this recipe tonight. The video makes me drool! I'm also going to try your balsamic vinaigrette can you tell me the calories on the dressing? And is it for 1 Tbs or 2?
Thank you!
Diane
kara
Thank you, Diane! For the balsamic dressing, are you referring to the one on the Autumn salad? If so, it's 43 calories per tablespoon. Hope that helps!
Alison
Made this last night and it was a very simply and delicious dinner. I checked the temperature of my chicken at the 2.5 hour mark and it was done. Thanks for the great recipe!
kara
So glad you enjoyed it!! Thank you so much for leaving a comment and rating. I appreciate it so much!
Ashley
I made this for my family for dinner, and it was a huge hit!! Highly recommend!
Crissy
Let me start out by saying my 6 year old daughter's favorite food was "chicken in a box" which in english is the orange chicken from costco. Since she was diagnosed with Celiac and can no longer eat gluten, she hasn't been able to have it and missed "chicken in a box" so much she would be in tears. Fast forward to Kara coming out with her honey garlic chicken recipe, we tried it and it was delicious. Best of all, my daughter LOVES it and says it's better than "chicken in a box". We literally had zero leftovers. Thank you Kara for creating this!!!