Hawaiian Chicken Freezer Meal

This week I did some grocery shopping and included items to make a few things from “Don’t Panic Dinner’s in the Freezer.” I have marked about eight items to try but so far I’ve only made four. And we’ve only eaten one. I got the book from the library and it is due back in a couple of days. I was hoping to renew it but there are two more people in line for the book, so no renewing allowed. I’ve copied down all the recipes I’ve already made and plan to copy down a few more that I want to try. Thursday I made three of the recipes which became a total of five meals and Friday I made one recipe for a total of three meals. The book is set up with the regular sized recipe and then some recipes have the ingredients multiplied two, four, and six times while other recipes have the ingredients multiplied three, six, and nine times. Since there are only two of us eating, I did not multiply any of the meals. I simply separated the regular recipes to create better sized meals for us.

The first recipe we tried was Hawaiian Chicken. It is cooked in the Crock-pot (another plus). Here is the recipe in case you are interested. We thought it was good but could maybe use a little more flavor. We did not have the toasted almonds on ours.

Hawaiian Chicken

This recipe has 8-10 servings. It can be tripled or more if needed.

6 lbs. Boneless, skinless chicken breast halves

2-16oz cans pineapple slices, drained

2-15oz cans mandarin orange, drained

¼ cup cornstarch

½ cup brown sugar

¼ cup soy sauce

¼ cup lemon juice

1 t salt

1 t ground ginger

½ t ground red pepper

 

Serving day:

Steamed Rice, Toasted almonds, Green pepper chunks

Cooking Day Instructions:

Place chicken in freezer bag. Mix together fruit, cornstarch, sugar, soy sauce, lemon juice, salt, ginger, and ground red pepper. Pour over chicken in bag. Freeze, using the freezer bag method.

 

Serving Day:

Thaw chicken mixture. Place in crock-pot, cover and cook on low for 4-5 hours or on high for 2-3 hours. Add green pepper to crock-pot one hour before serving, if desired. To serve, spoon over steamed rice and top with toasted almonds.

Here are the directions for the freezer bag method:

Freezer Bag Method:
Use for liquids and semi-solid foods.
How to do it:

When using the freezer bag method for freezing, place your meal in the freezer bag, remove as much air as possible, and seal. Then take a cake pan, or a pan that has sides, and lay the bags flat, stacking one on top of the other. The cake pan will not only freeze the meals flat, giving you more freezer room, but will help ensure that any leaks will be kept within the pan. Place the pan in the freezer. Once the item has been “flash frozen,” remove the items from the pan and stack inside your freezer.

On serving day: When defrosting, make sure you place the item in the refrigerator with a pan, plate or bowl underneath to catch the extra moisture (or any leaks) from defrosting. Do not defrost on the counter. If you need to speed up the defrosting process, you can use the defrost cycle on the microwave.

If you do try the recipe, let us know how you liked it. I will be posting the other recipes we’ve made once we’ve tasted them. (I wouldn’t want to suggest you make something that tasted horrible!)