Chicken- Sweet and Spunky

Submitted by Chef1MOM-Connie

"This is a wonderfully simple and quick recipe to make for a dinner for 2 or for company. With each bite you get to roll the tastes around and enjoy the spunk that comes from the ingredients. To be sure they are not the normal for a chicken recipe but make a great sauce which flavors and smells so good."

 

• Ready In: 1hr
• Ingredients: 9
• Serves: 4

ingredients

• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1⁄4 cup honey
• 1 cup water
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
• 16 ounces frozen spinach
• 1⁄2 lb baby carrots
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 onion, sliced into rings

directions

1. in a small saucepan heat water to simmer.
2. add in honey and stir til combined, turn off heat.
3. add in cinnamon and soy sauce stirring til incorporated.
4. in a 9x12 casserole dish put frozen spinach, baby carrots in first.
5. place chicken on top of vegetables.
6. pour sauce over top of chicken and veggies.
7. put onion slices and butter pats on top.
8. cook in 350 oven for 45 minutes or until juices run clear from chicken.
9. check chicken at 20 min mark and baste with juices.
10. Note- I used large breasts, depending on size of chicken piecss, cooking times will vary.

Reviews

[Jubes]

Reviewed for Aus/NZ forum recipe swap October 2011- This is a really easy recipe and received mixed reviews from my family. So easy to add everything into a baking dish and bung into the oven.....almost cooked itself. Like mummamills, I'm not keen on frozen spinach and wished I had used fresh spinach. I think the frozen spinach we get here is chopped so fine that it sort of became part of the sauce. The chicken pieces I used were fairly large and took about an extra 30 minutes to cook, by which time the onions had turned crispy. I think covering for the first part of cooking may have been a good idea. Photo to be posted

 

[mummamills]

I really loved this! I am fond of Greek food, and this reminded me of the flavors in Mousaka. I HATE frozen spinach, so I used fresh baby spinach. two things I would do different next time. first I would put the spinach on top, and cover the dish for the first part of cooking, as my chicken was a tad dry. 2nd, I would stir in some corn flour slurry 10 mins before it finish cooking, because the sauce is sooo good! served over rice. Made for Aussie swap sept 2011

 

[pahealthymom]

I made this a while back for the family and it did not go over too well. Maybe I did something wrong. We did like the cinnamon sauce over the chicken, but the spinach was so overwhelming that I couldn't really enjoy the chicken. I also had to increase the cook time to about 2-2 1/2 hours to get the chicken done and the carrots even a little bit softened. I would not use this recipe again nor would I recommend it to anyone. Sorry, but thanks for the recipe just the same. It gave us an opportunity to try something completely different.

 

[Studentchef]

I thought this was a great recipe and loved the fact that there was a complete meal in this dish. I really enjoyed it,s o I thank you very much for submitting this recipe.

 

[NorthwestGal]

A really great dish. The spinach was the real star here, as it was positively tasty with the honey and cinnamon mixture enhancing every morsel of spinach. What a great combo! And, although the chicken was very moist, I think it could have benefitted by some herbs or spices because it was a bit bland as is. And paired with spinach and carrots, I'm not exactly sure what spices I would suggest. (And given that this is a contest entry, I didn't want to adjust anything in this go around anyway.) All in all, this was a dish that was well worth trying. Thanks, chef!