Slow Cooker Honey Ginger Chicken

Slow cookers, or crock pots, are like hot little �life savers�. For those of us who are busy and always on-the-go, who don't have time to labor in the kitchen for hours or do a sink full of dishes every day, and maybe even lack the confidence it takes to skillfully prepare a dish, slow cookers are the solution. There are a lot of amazing slow cooker recipes available, but this recipe for Slow Cooker Honey Ginger Chicken is a must try.

The slow cooker was created by The Naxon Utilities Corporation. In 1970 The Rival Company purchased Naxon and re-introduced the product under the Crock-Pot name a year later. As if being able to put food in a pot and have it cook itself isn't benefit enough, crock pots are safer than conventional stove tops and ovens because of the lower cooking temperatures and closed lids (which is why you can turn them on and walk away from them for hours). Kristy, the mastermind behind this delicious chicken recipe and the food blog �Mommy Hates Cooking� started her blog �from [her] hatred to cook and [her] desire to learn to love it�. Crock pot cooking makes learning to love how to cook a little bit easier. OK, a whole lot easier.

One of the ingredients in this slow cooker chicken recipe is ginger, a herbaceous perennial indigenous to south China. In the late 16th century, ginger became the first oriental spice cultivated in the �New World�, in Jamaica. Today, India now leads even China in ginger production. Ginger is a hot, fragrant spice and there are many uses for this product in cooking. It can be pickled and eaten as a snack, steeped to make ginger tisane (an herbal tea), made into wine and a sweet confection or even powdered and used in recipes such as gingerbread, cookies and cakes. Ginger has even more significant uses, however. According to the American Cancer Society, ginger is a cancer treatment that is promoted to keep tumors from developing (although scientific proof of its powers is technically unproven). Ginger has also proven effective for treating nausea and in old folk medicine it has been used as a stimulant, a carminative and used to treat dyspepsia, gastroparesis, constipation and colic. Whatever its use, it adds a beautiful spicy dimension to the flavor profile of this slow cooker honey ginger chicken recipe of Kristy's.

Not only is this amazing recipe easy to throw together in the slow cooker, it's also a really easy chicken recipe to make in terms of the required ingredients. With items such as honey, soy sauce, ketchup, garlic and ginger, it doesn't get much easier than this. Makes sure, though, that you have an extra can of pineapple chunks in the pantry. Pineapple is going to cut the heat from the ginger and the sweetness of the honey just a little bit, leaving you with a well-balanced, delicious meal you'll want to make again and again. Serve with a side of cooked rice and pineapple chunks and you have a complete meal.