I love a good stir fry. LOVE IT. The problem is they can be rather time consuming if you don’t have the meat pre-cooked or veggies pre-chopped or what have you. And then spend an hour making rice just right. It is one of those meals that is supposed to be quick, but never really is unless you have everything prepped like one of those Rachel Ray 30 minute meals shows that are total bullcrap because no one on earth makes homemade soup from scratch in 30 minutes. Girl, it takes more than 30 minutes for my glass cook-top stove to bring one inch of water to a simmer. We know that soup is cold and crunchy.
My way around this issue is to have the meat and sauce already cooked before hand so that the putting-together of the meal truly only takes 45 minutes on the night in question. I need it to only take that long because I have five kids and work three jobs and live in the real world. So, put that Sunday afternoon to work and bust out the slow-cooker. I am also going to mention that this is NOT the same as the pineapple chicken slow-cooker recipe floating around that has like three cups of brown sugar in it. That one scares me even though it is probably delicious.
Slow Cook Pineapple Chicken
Ingredients:
- 2 lbs chicken thighs
- 4 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1/2 tablespoon ground black pepper
- 1/2 tablespoon Ground white pepper
- 1/2 tablespoon crushed red pepper
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
- 1 tablespoon powdered ginger
- 2 tablespoons dry lemon grass
- 40 oz canned crushed pineapple with juice
- 1 large red bell pepper
- Chopped green onion
The super simple mega easy instructions:
Place chicken thighs in wide saucepan with all spices and soy sauce. Brown on medium high heat for 10 minutes. Basically, just sear them to get a little crisp on the outsides. Transfer pan contents to a crock-pot-type-apperatus. Add crushed pineapple with juice and turn heat to very low and slow cook four hours or until chicken is falling apart.
Chop or slice bell pepper and add to pan 10 minutes before serving.
Serve over rice and garnish with chopped green onion.
The end result is fairly low in fat and sugar, but not so much as to make you hate life itself. It manages to satisfy my craving for szechuan takeout for a few days at least.