Easiest Ever Sweet & Sour Chicken in the Crock Pot

This is the easiest way possible to make sweet and sour chicken, without having to go through a whole bunch of steps or order take-out.

I should call this “mock sweet and sour chicken” though because there is no frying and actually way less calories than the traditional version.

Just now, as I was writing this, I decided to see what is already out on the internet for easy sweet and sour chicken recipes.

I found a lot of recipes that want you to cut up the chicken, shake it in a bag with the bread crumbs or flour, make your own sweet and sour sauce, etc. etc. Y’all, this is not like that. I personally do not have the time nor the energy for all those steps.

This chicken recipe started out as just an experiment. I even filmed it while I ran the experiment. You can see the video below.

For this recipe you do not have to cut any chicken because it falls apart after cooking in the slow cooker. You do not have to shake anything in a bag. No thanks. We are just putting these ingredients in and letting them meld together in the greatest cooking invention ever (in my opinion), the crock pot.

First, here’s my video of the experiment, and then I’ll place the recipe down below.

It is so easy you won’t even need to print this. Just buy sweet and sour sauce and chicken and bread crumbs or flour at the grocery store.

Oh! And I did it all gluten free!

Ingredients:

Chicken breasts (I used 5)

1 bottle of sweet & sour sauce

salt (sprinkled in)

pepper (sprinkled in)

bread crumbs (I used gluten free) about 1 cup

Extra virgin olive oil (drizzled liberally over each chicken breast)

Directions:

Turn your slow cooker to low. Spray the pan with non-stick cooking spray. Place five chicken breasts in the crock pot (or however many you need). Sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper. Sprinkle bread crumbs to thoroughly cover each chicken breast.

Liberally drizzle oil over each piece of chicken. Cook on low for several hours.

After 3-5 hours (for frozen chicken–less for thawed chicken), drain out excess fluid. You can reserve that liquid to use as a rich, heavy chicken broth for future recipes.

Pour the entire bottle of sweet and sour sauce onto the chicken. Then let it cook for one more hour.

That’s how I did it. However, if you need to leave it all day and do the draining and the sweet and sour sauce at dinner time, you can do it that way too.

Why I make things so simple:

Life is so busy it is usually overwhelming to me. If you feel like you have too much to do, the crock pot really can be your best friend. As long as it’s just chicken you’re cooking, you can get it started by lunch time and that’s good enough. Sometimes, if I know I’m cutting it close on time, I will set it to high instead of low, and that does make a big difference.

Click below for the printable version.

If you have extra time while getting the chicken started, you could add in vegetables. These could soak up the liquid and be delicious. Then you wouldn’t have to drain as much later on either.

Happy cooking!