Slow Cooker Honey Garlic Chicken

6 servings
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 6 hours
Total Time 6 hours 5 minutes

Slow Cooker Honey Garlic Chicken is the perfect weeknight meal with just five ingredients. Full of flavor and easy to make with pantry ingredients and almost no prep!

Slow Cooker Honey Garlic Chicken is the perfect weeknight meal with just five ingredients. Full of flavor and easy to make with pantry ingredients and almost no prep!

Slow Cooker Honey Garlic Chicken is the perfect weeknight meal that will be waiting for you when you get home and can be prepared even if you’re in a rush in the morning! You can also add the ingredients to a freezer bag and save it for later making this a perfect make ahead meal.

When I was pregnant with out first child I went through a crazy phase where I decided the entire deep freeze needed to be filled with enough meals to get us through the first six months of life with a baby. Enter slow cooker meals.

The slow cooker seemed like the perfect cooking tool to get us through the rough times. This Slow Cooker Honey Garlic Chicken became a staple in our house.

Slow Cooker Honey Garlic Chicken made with just the small amount of each ingredient listed leaves you with just enough liquid so the tops of the chicken can brown instead of becoming soggy and grey and the liquid left over (once you skim the oil off the top that the chicken has rendered off) is the perfect amount to spoon on top of your chicken.

There is no need to pull out the cornstarch here, there’s no soupy water to thicken. Just a delicious meal you can make even fancier with the addition of some parsley or sesame seeds to give the chicken a bit of color.

For Making Ahead: If you plan to assemble and freeze the ingredients, you just add them to a freezer back and freeze flat for more even defrosting. When you are ready to cook, take the bag from the freezer and let it defrost for 24 hours in your fridge first. Then cook according to the directions in the recipe card.

Slow Cooker Honey Garlic Chicken is the perfect weeknight meal with just five ingredients. Full of flavor and easy to make with pantry ingredients and almost no prep!

Slow Cooker Honey Garlic Chicken uses pantry ingredients you have in your cupboard at this very moment (except the chicken, but I mean…). Ketchup? Soy Sauce? Honey? Garlic?

It doesn’t even take very much to make the Slow Cooker Honey Garlic Chicken delicious. I am a huge fan of cooking in your slow cooker with small amounts of liquid. Too often a recipe will call for significant amounts of added liquids and you end up with completely watery soup.

If you’re looking for more slow cooker meals that leave out all the excess liquid, here is a great list:

Slow Cooker Honey Garlic Chicken is the perfect weeknight meal with just five ingredients. Full of flavor and easy to make with pantry ingredients and almost no prep!

Tools Used In This Recipe:
Slow Cooker: Love this slow cooker and how programmable it is, it has been a workhorse for me… until…
My New Slow Cooker: This recipe was made in this slow cooker. For larger roasts I also brown the meat in the insert and not lose a bunch of the flavor by transferring the meat and leaving the browned bits behind. If you’re thinking of a new slow cooker, consider it if your budget is open.
Lite Soy Sauce: I am an admitted lover of salt but I don’t even own non-lite soy sauce. This is the one you want in your kitchen and if you use regular soy sauce expect that your result will be saltier.
Freezer Bags: Other brands may be more popular, but I have never had a bag burst/leak with this brand. I have however with Ziploc.

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Slow Cooker Honey Garlic Chicken

Slow Cooker Honey Garlic Chicken is the perfect weeknight meal with just five ingredients. Full of flavor and easy to make with pantry ingredients and almost no prep!
Yield 6 servings
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 6 hours
Total Time 6 hours 5 minutes
Course Main
Cuisine American
Author Sabrina Snyder

Ingredients
 

  • 2 tablespoons lite soy sauce
  • 2 tablespoons ketchup
  • 2 tablespoons honey
  • 3 cloves garlic , minced
  • 6 chicken thighs , bone in skin on

Instructions

  • Combine all the ingredients together in the slow cooker until well mixed.
  • Lay the chicken skin side up in a single layer and cook on low for 6-7 hours.
  • If your chicken isn't browned on the top you can put it on a foil lined cookie sheet under a broiler for 2-3 minutes.

Video

Nutrition

Calories: 167kcal | Carbohydrates: 7g | Protein: 22g | Fat: 4g | Saturated Fat: 1g | Cholesterol: 107mg | Sodium: 481mg | Potassium: 311mg | Sugar: 6g | Vitamin A: 55IU | Vitamin C: 0.7mg | Calcium: 13mg | Iron: 1mg
Keyword: Slow Cooker Honey Garlic Chicken

Slow Cooker Honey Garlic Chicken is the perfect weeknight meal with just five ingredients. Full of flavor and easy to make with pantry ingredients and almost no prep!

Slow Cooker Honey Garlic Chicken is the perfect weeknight meal with just five ingredients. Full of flavor and easy to make with pantry ingredients and almost no prep!
Slow Cooker Honey Garlic Chicken is the perfect weeknight meal with just five ingredients. Full of flavor and easy to make with pantry ingredients and almost no prep!

About the Author: Sabrina Snyder

Sabrina is a professionally trained Private Chef of over 10 years with ServSafe Manager certification in food safety. She creates all the recipes here on Dinner, then Dessert, fueled in no small part by her love for bacon.

Sabrina Snyder is a professionally trained personal and private chef of over 10 years who is the creator and developer of all the recipes on Dinner, then Dessert.

She is also the author of the cookbook Dinner, then Dessert – Satisfying Meals Using Only 3, 5 or 7 Ingredients, published by Harper Collins.

She started Dinner, then Dessert as a business in her office as a lunch service for her coworkers who admired her lunches before going to culinary school and becoming a full time personal chef and private chef.

As a personal chef Sabrina would cook for families one day a week and cook their entire week of dinners. All grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning was done along with instructions on reheating. As a private chef she cooked for private parties and cooked in family homes in the evenings for families on a nightly basis after working as a personal chef during the day.

Sabrina has been certified as a ServSafe Manager since 2007 and was a longstanding member of the USPCA Personal Chef Association including being on the board of the Washington DC Chapter of Chefs in the US Personal Chef Association when they won Chapter of the year.

As a member of the community of food website creators Sabrina Snyder has spoken at many conferences regarding her experiences as a food writer including the Indulge Food Conference, Everything Food Conference, Haven Food Conference and IACP Annual Food Professionals Conference.

Sabrina lives with her family in sunny California.

Dinner, then Dessert, Inc. owns the copyright on all images and text and does not allow for its original recipes and pictures to be reproduced anywhere other than at this site unless authorization is given. If you enjoyed the recipe and would like to publish it on your own site, please re-write it in your own words, and link back to my site and recipe page. Read my disclosure and copyright policy. This post may contain affiliate links.

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Comments

    1. Yes you can! Brown the chicken in the insert and leave the tasty browned bits to deepen the flavors of this recipe! Enjoy!

  1. I always trust Sabrina’s recipes to the tastiest, easiest and always well received by my family. I have used this recipe many times without fail and just love it. One of our go to when stumped what to do with chicken! On a low sodium diet, so have to tweak recipes to fit my needs. But otherwise, Thanks Sabrina for all your recipes.

  2. Hubby cooked this for me, was really nice, fell off the bone but needed more sauce. However, as it cooled down it started to lose its taste. Maybe it was over cooked, but initially on first cook was very nice.
    Will encourage hubby to cook again.
    Thank you for thos recipe.

  3. The honey mustard chicken was very nice but I missed out on some of the mustards that were required. Next time I will have all the mustards required.

  4. This recipe looks great and super easy. What size slow cooker is it for? I’m new to slow cooking and I’ve read that your slow cooker should be at least 2/3 full when cooking. As mine is large I need to make sure the recipe will be okay (or I can double it). Thanks.

  5. I made the Honey Garlic Crock Pot Chicken yesterday for my son and his family. WOW WOW WOW !!! It was easy and when done believe me, I almost didn’t give it to my son. But, before giving away I had to take a bite. Talk about delicious. The sauce was perfect. After done I did place on foil lined cookie sheet under the broiler just for a minute just for a little crispiness. I’m making my own chicken today for my self. And I can’t wait !!!

      1. Hubby cooked the brown sugar garlic chicken for me, was really nice, fell off the bone but needed more sauce. However, as it cooled down it started to lose its taste. Maybe it was over cooked, but initially on first cook was very nice.
        Will encourage hubby to cook again.
        Thank you for thos recipe.

  6. Hello I made this tonight. It smelled really good while cooking but I think the time was to long. The sauce taste burned and the chicken really had no flavor under the skin. It was blah. I used everything you said for the sauce. I used thighs with skin and bone. So I think the time was to long maybe 4 hours would have been better. I had it on low. And maybe some salt

    1. You don’t want to overcrowd the slow cooker. My suggestion is to use 2 slow cookers to ensure it all cooks correctly.

  7. I’ve made this twice already and really wanted to make it for dinner tonight but all I have on hand is frozen chicken breast or tenderloins… what do you suggest I do when using these rather than thighs?
    I love this recipe btw ??

    1. I’m so glad you love the recipe. I would use chicken breast but you’ll want to make sure that it’s completely thawed before adding it into the slow cooker. Enjoy!

  8. Delicious! I did not have lite soy sauce, unfortunately, so I added a bit more of the honey for sweetness to counterbalance the salt. Also had a packet of plum sauce left from a previous takeout dinner, so I threw that in there as well.

    I’m thinking some thinly sliced/ribboned fresh scallions with sesame seeds on top as a garnish might be nice. I’ll try that next time. This recipe is so good in its original form, but you can experiment with a few things to take it up a notch. This recipe will be a mainstay in my menu rotation — I stock up on chicken thighs when they are on sale and am always looking for easy and delicious ways to prepare them.

    Serve with rice and a salad or green vegetable. YUM

  9. Made this last night. The house smelled so good!!
    Delicious,easy and very tender chicken thighs. Definitely making this again and again!!

  10. Sabrina, I made this today with large boneless, skinless chicken breast. I made the sauce with the exact measurements from your recipe. It did not come out looking at all like the picture. The chicken was dried out, I probably should’ve cut it shorter time because it didn’t have skin. The sauce was very watered down. Do you have any suggestions as to how I can make it better next time?

    1. The chicken skin of the thighs helps to protect the moisture of the meat. The dark meat itself also performs better in the slow cooker, so using boneless skinless breast meat was the biggest problem. Was your chicken breast frozen when it went in? If not the watery part of this confuses me a little as I only add 6T of sauce ingredients to the recipe. There will be a small amount of liquid (which the chicken releases, but it’s really just enough to spoon over the chicken meat when serving. I hope you give the recipe another chance, it’s one of our go-to recipes.

    1. Maybe a half an hour less. I would check it around 5 hours and watch it from there. I hope you enjoy it.

  11. Um… it’s just 2 tablespoons of everything. The bottom of my cookers is just a thin film of honey, ketchup, and soy sauce. How do you have enough to cover the chicken??

    1. The chicken will cook down and release liquid too. At the end you can spoon the liquid over the top and pop it under the broiler if you want a nice crisp on the tops. I hope you enjoy it!

  12. I was wondering if you could give me the nutritional values for this recipe. This is soooo good and my kids love it which is surprising but makes it even more amazing!!

    1. I’m in the process of updating all the recipes to show the nutritional info. Just completed this one for you. 🙂 So glad you all love it!

    2. All I have is a crock pot, if I want to use this recipe with boneless pork chops, what would timing be and should I brown before putting in crock pot?

      1. Are they lean pork chops or pork chops with a fattier cut of meat in it? It would depend on that and the thickness. I like to brown meat before adding it to the slow cooker first. If I were in your spot I’d wrap them in bacon if possible to keep them moist, if not I’d expect they’re going to end up a bit dry. Try the Oven Baked Brown Sugar Garlic Pork Chops on the site, those don’t take long at all have have a similar flavor.

    1. just curious if this came out the same as it is described when directed to cook it on low for 5-6 hrs?

  13. 5 stars!!! Ibe made this now several times at least twice a month now for a few months!!! Its so easy and incredibly tender, moist, and delightfully delicious!!! Easy peasy and mine look just like the pictured ones!!! We have them served up over a bed of rice drizzled with a little sauce and broccoli! Has become a go to meal for us. I like that you can assemble everything ahead and freeze it for later use. Thank you will be making your whole chicke recipe next…have a really good feeling aboit it which I never would have had in the past!!!

  14. Made this twice now and was a big hit!!! The chicken is so tender, moist, and scrumptious it’s become a go to in our house at least twice a month!!! Quick, easy, and insanely delicious!!! Served over rice or riced cauliflower (that’s want I used) with a veggie it’s an easy peasy delightful meal!!! Thank you for the recipe!!!