Slow Cooker Spicy Honey Lime Chicken

by Sabrina Snyder

Published on Last updated

29 Comments

5 from 3 votes
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Slow Cooker Spicy Honey Lime Chicken made with just five ingredients with just a couple of minutes of effort. Perfect for shredding as chicken carnitas in all your favorite Mexican recipes.

We love slow cooker chicken recipes including the most popular recipe on the site, Slow Cooker Brown Sugar Garlic Chicken and Slow Cooker Thai Peanut Chicken.

Slow Cooker Spicy Honey Lime Chicken Slow Cooker Spicy Honey Lime Chicken

We love cooking with our slow cooker all year because in the fall and winter we’re busy with school and in the summers we don’t want to heat up the kitchen. This recipe is actually one of our favorite for the summer.

Another positive about this recipe, it’s just five ingredients, making it one of the my favorite easy chicken recipes. The flavors are perfectly balanced with honey, chili powder, lime and jalapenos. Plus the cost of the recipe is super low.

I made a trip to the grocery store for carnitas tacos and bought all the ingredients including the corn tortillas, the recipe ingredients cost under 5 dollars.

Crockpot Honey Lime Chicken

Slow Cooker Chicken Carnitas

Slow Cooker season may be waning but we are LOVING this slow cooker chicken carnitas recipe this summer. We add the ingredients to the slow cooker and let it cook low and slow. Once cooked I shred the chicken and put it under the broiler or in a skillet to crisp it up.

Serve this chicken carnitas with some cilantro and diced onions in a tortilla. I promise you, you’ll eat these cheater carnitas all summer long.

Want to make something similar in the oven, I’ve got you covered! Head on over to Baked Honey Lime Chicken and just add in some chili powder and sliced jalapenos.

Want more easy slow cooker chicken recipes?

Crockpot Honey Lime Chicken with Jalapenos

What to serve with Slow Cooker Chicken Recipes?

We love serving this dish over steamed rice or roasted potatoes. Additionally the chicken can be shredded and added to other recipes like tacos, burritos and salads.

How to make Crispy Slow Cooker Chicken

It may sound impossible to some to make crispy slow cooker chicken. It actually is one of my favorite things about cooking in the slow cooker and quite easy!

  • Do NOT add additional liquids.
  • Brown the chicken before putting it into the slow cooker.
  • Make sure the chicken is not crowded in the slow cooker (look above the liquids do not come up to the level of the skin on the chicken).
  • Turn on the broiler in your oven and simply broil the chicken for 2-3 minutes before serving for extra crispy skin.

I LOVE crispy skinned slow cooker recipes including my two favorites Crisp & Juicy Slow Cooker Chicken and Crispy Cracklin’ Pork Shoulder, the latter of which includes just a few minutes in the oven but results in a ridiculously crispy and delicious topping. PS that recipe makes the best pork carnitas ever.

Tools used in the making of Slow Cooker Spicy Honey Lime Chicken:
Aluminum Slow Cooker: This slow cooker is a workhorse and a perfect size for smaller recipes.

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Dinner, then Dessert

Slow Cooker Spicy Honey Lime Chicken

Slow Cooker Spicy Honey Lime Chicken made with just five ingredients with just a couple of minutes of effort. Perfect for shredding as chicken carnitas in all your favorite Mexican recipes.
Yield 5 Servings
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 3 hours
Total Time 3 hours 5 minutes
Course Main Course
Cuisine American/Mexican
Author Sabrina Snyder
Crockpot Honey Lime Chicken with Jalapenos
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Ingredients
 

  • 1/4 cup  honey
  • 1 jalapeno sliced thinly
  • 1 teaspoon chili powder
  • 1 lime zested and juiced
  • 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon coarse ground black pepper
  • 5 chicken thighs bone in and skin on

Instructions

  • Add all the ingredients (except the chicken) together in small bowl and whisk.
  • Add the chicken to the slow cooker skin side up.
  • Pour over the mixture and cook on low heat for 7-8 hours or high heat for 3-4 hours.
  • If you want the chicken to be even crispier put it 8 inches below the broiler in the oven on high heat for 2-3 minutes.

Nutrition

Calories: 289kcal | Carbohydrates: 11g | Protein: 18g | Fat: 18g | Saturated Fat: 5g | Cholesterol: 110mg | Sodium: 326mg | Potassium: 253mg | Sugar: 10g | Vitamin A: 235IU | Vitamin C: 7.3mg | Calcium: 13mg | Iron: 1mg
Keyword: Slow Cooker Spicy Honey Lime Chicken

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Slow Cooker Chicken Carnitas
Crockpot Spicy Honey Lime Chicken

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 upcoming cookbook: Dinner, then Dessert – Satisfying Meals Using Only 3, 5 or 7 Ingredients which is being 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.

See more posts by Sabrina

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. Carnitas’s – braised or roasted PORK that is shredded. By definition carnitas is pork. This is a shredded/pulled chicken recipe, the word carnitas has no place in the write up or recipe

    Reply

  2. could this be used as a freezer dump dinner, i.e., all the ingredients put in a bag, put in the freezer and then added to the slow cooker? There aren’t many ingredients but doing stuff ahead helps save me some time.

    Reply

    1. I don’t suggest adding these ingredients frozen into the slow cooker. It will thaw as it cooks and release too much liquid and make it soupy. Sorry.

      Reply

  3. I am slowly working my way through this collection of recipes; we are great slow cooker fans in our family and these all work well and are delicious; thanks so much for making these available!

    Reply

  4. Do you add a small amount of water to the mixture or is it only thoes ingredients? Im asking because in the pic it looks like a nice amount of liquids.

    Reply

    1. The chicken will release liquid as it’s cooked so that’s what you’re seeing. I only included the ingredients in the recipe card into the slow cooker. I hope you enjoy it!

      Reply

  5. Made this twice! The flavor is so light and delicious. Second time I made it, I added a corn starch slurry to thicken up the pan liquids and it made a HUGE difference to the texture and boldness of the flavor / how coated the chicken stays.

    Reply

    1. You’ll want to remove the thin layer of the rind of the lime by using a microplane grater for the zest portion. Then squeeze the juice out of the lime. Hope this helps clear up any confusion.

      Reply

    1. I usually don’t recommend breasts in a slow cooker because they tend to dry out but I have seen comments on some of my other slow cooker recipes stating they have used breasts with no issue. If you decide to try, I’d love to know how it turned out.

      Reply