Garlic Chicken Recipe - A Freezer to Crockpot Friendly Recipe

My couples cookbook recipes are recipes I have tailored specifically for couples (or 2 friends!) as I find there are just so many recipes intended for 4 or more, yet very few tailor to just 2 diners! A lot of mine are meant as Slow Cooker or Crockpot recipes, and more specifically many are freezer to crockpot recipes. If you want to know more about freezer to crockpot cooking you can check out a longer explanation on one of my other Couples Cookbook recipes - Teriyaki Chicken Recipe or Hearty Pork Stew Recipe.

The main concept is that you prepare lots of ingredients for lots of meals on one day then bag the recipe ingredients together and freeze them, then you just dump the contents of one bag in the crockpot each morning. A yummy meal is then waiting for you at the end of the day when you get home from work. Simple! You get a healthy meal, less waste and save money!

I have been working to adapt recipes I find, regular ones and slow cooker ones, to suit this Freezer to Crockpot method of cooking. Some ingredients freeze well while others don't, some cook well from frozen but others will need defrosting. Freezer to Crockpot cooking is the easiest method of cooking healthy meals everyday that I have come across. Sometimes at the end of a work day the last thing you want to do is prepare a home cooked meal, this makes that so much simpler. I spend one aftrenoon a month sorting the recipes I want to cook for the month, and working out all the ingrendients I will need to buy and what I have on hand. Then you just have to buy it all - I do my food shop online usually to save me the time of trawling the supermarket and it saves me money as I don't buy items I don't need. The I usually spend about 4-5 hours on a Sunday chopping veg, browning meat and making sauces. You just need to pack all the ingredients into large freezer bags, let it cool and place in the freezer to cook at a later date. I can usually make between 12-16 meals as I make 2 of everything normally.

It not only saves me time, and has me eatng healthier meals, it also saves money as I waste very little as everything gets prepared and bagged for cooking, if we decide not to eat it on the alocated day it just rolls over to another day - no waste! Plus I only prepare portions big enough for 2 people, again that tends to mean we waste very little at the end of the meal but it also meals we don't over-eat by having seconds just because it's there.

This recipe is one of my own creating, working from a recipe I had for garlic chicken cooked in the oven I adapted it for a Garlic Chicken Freezer to Crockpot Recipe. It leaves the chicken nice and moist and tender, with just the right zesty kick from the lime juice and a garlic taste that isn't overpowering. You can add other veg to it if you wish, I jsut find that sweet corn and peas always work well together in dishes, and I just like salad peppers in everything. It also give the dish a nice bit of colour.

I would suggest thawing this dish out the night before cooking as chicken cooks better when it has been defrosted, but this is not a requirment. I have personally just found that it is usually more tender if it is defrosted before cooking. If you forget though, don't worry, it'll still taste great.