Hotel Room Gourmet: Quick Tangy Honey Chicken

Matt and I are back in the hotel for a week and, after eating so well at his parents' in South Carolina, it's especially difficult to come back to meals of canned soup and instant oatmeal. Luckily, I've come up with a few recipes that are as enjoyable to eat as they are simple to prepare. Like most of my dishes in these days of hotel room mini-fridges and microwaves, this recipe was born of necessity; the necessity of keeping meal ideas fresh, with only a handful of ingredients and limited cooking utensils at my disposal. Matt is not always thrilled with my endless need to experiment, but even he has embraced this recipe wholeheartedly, requesting that I make when we visited his mom last weekend.

Though it contains no traditional Asian ingredients, this dish was inspired by a new favorite from our local Chinese restaurant, and I think the finished product pretty closely approximates the original. Since it was designed for hotel-room cooking, it's also probably one of the easiest and simplest recipes I'll ever share - so let's get on with it!

Annnnnd... the plastic plate is back!

Four Ingredient Tangy Honey Chicken

serves two

2 chicken breasts (or 8 oz chicken), cut in 1-2 inch chunks and sprinkled with ground black pepper

2 Tablespoons Thick Worcestershire Sauce*

1 Tablespoon honey

1/4 -1/2 cup water

*If you don't have the Thick variety, you can blend 2 Tbs regular Worcestershire Sauce with 1-2 Tbs flour. Just be sure to add slowly to avoid lumps!

In a small bowl, combine honey, Worcestershire Sauce and 1/4 cup water. Set aside. In a large frying pan, heat a small amount of oil (olive oil works great, but we also loved trying it with coconut oil!) over medium heat. Add chicken and cook until no longer pink inside. Pour blended sauce over chicken and stir to coat.  Sauce should be somewhat watery.  Cover and reduce heat to medium-low. Continue to cook until sauce is reduced - it should thicken and coat the chicken like a glaze. If desired, add additional water to deglaze the pan for a richer flavor (I usually do this once or twice) before reducing sauce again.  Serve with stir-fried veggies and rice. Enjoy!

This post is linked at:
33 Shades of Green: Tasty Tuesdays