Slow Cooker Sesame Chicken Thighs

Bring out your slow cooker and pantry staple ingredients for a sweet and spicy sesame chicken thighs recipe!

Sometimes I get SO inspired to write and share a recipe with you all. Especially when the bros BOTH eat it. Well that’s until Joey took a bite of fourth bites sesame chicken thighs and the piece he ate had a red pepper flake in it. “It’s SPICY Mom!!” Spicy sounds like sesame coming out of mouth by the way… articulation aside, he then stopped eating the sesame chicken. Which then caused a ripple effect and Anthony stopped. Regardless, I had a moment or two of happy… which is hard to come by after 5pm in our house!

I’m fairly certain the boys ate this sesame chicken because of the ingredients. Eeek! Lots of sweet and salty in there. And instead of chicken breasts like I use in my shredded chicken recipes, I used chicken thighs. Which are much more flavorful than chicken breasts IMO— thanks to a little extra fat. Which never hurt anyone! Not even my particular-eating-toddlers. I know I do not share nutrition information for my recipes, so beware this one is a little salty. If you want to play around with the recipe you could use a lower sodium soy sauce and ketchup.

Bring out your slow cooker and pantry staple ingredients for a sweet and spicy sesame chicken thighs recipe! — Look at the caramelization! Thanks to the sugar in the honey and ketchup…

And really, this recipe wasn’t spicy. GO FIGURE Joey ate 1 of the 6 red pepper flakes in the whole dang meal. I actually added more red pepper flakes to my bowl because Momma likes it spicy. Rest assured we finished the meal with a little yogurt because the boys have learned like milk, yogurt cools off those taste buds when they are on fire! And that resulted in this:

Think it’s time for us to get a dog to help Mom with cleanup?! Enjoy another quick weeknight meal… because we all know dinner cleanup with little kids takes a lot longer than cooking and eating a meal!!!

Slow Cooker Sesame Chicken Thighs

Prep time

10 mins

Cook time

5 hours

Total time

5 hours 10 mins

Author: Katie Serbinski

Recipe type: Main Dish

Serves: 4 servings

Ingredients

4-6 boneless, skinless chicken thighs
2 tablespoons sesame seeds
½ cup soy
½ cup honey
½ cup ketchup
2 cloves garlic, minced
pinch of red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon canola oil
Brown rice and sliced green onions for serving

Instructions

Add all ingredients to slow cooker. Cover and cook on low for 4-5 hours.
Shred chicken and mix with additional sauce before serving.
See notes for thicker sauce option.

Notes

If you'd like a thicker sauce, combine one tablespoon of cornstarch with ¼ cup cold water. Once you shred the chicken, mix cornstarch mixture into the slow cooker. Cover, and cook the sauce and chicken on high for 15-20 minutes. Serve immediately.

Sesame chicken thighs reminded me a lot of my recipe for honey orange chicken— and I think next time I make my honey orange version I’ll be adding chicken thighs! Oh and be sure to make a cornstarch/water slurry if you want a thicker sauce for either of these Asian-inspired recipes. I skipped that part because a thin sauce is A-OK in my book [and still sticks to the rice so the boys like it too!].