Pan-Fried Chicken with Hoisin Cranberry Sauce

Here in the Garcia household we have been on a new recipe kick!! I finally feel like I've had the time and motivation to start testing out a bunch of new recipes!! Sometimes I wonder if Chuckles would prefer we stick to meals we know we love but I just can't help it! I love trying new recipes and I have built up quite the collection now! 

I was just going through our recipe binder (such a cute cute gift from our neighbors) and have discovered how many recipes we've collected over the last few years and it's AMAZING! I am so happy that Chuckles is willing to try almost all of the recipes I test out and I am so happy to be switching things up! I am just not a routine kind of gal, I love having at least one new meal a week!!

This past week we tried a new recipe from Taste of Home for Pan-Fried Chicken with Hoisin Cranberry Sauce!

It looks pretty delish right?? I'll let you know now this a keeper and I'd recommend everyone give this recipe a shot!

Ingredients:

·         4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves (6 ounces each)

·         1/4 teaspoon salt

·         1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

·         1/4 teaspoon pepper

·         1/2 cup all-purpose flour

·         2 eggs, beaten

·         1 cup panko (Japanese) bread crumbs

·         2 tablespoons olive oil

  

Sauce:

·         1 can (14 ounces) whole-berry cranberry sauce

·         1/4 cup hoisin sauce

·         1 teaspoon brown sugar

·         1/4 teaspoon salt

·         1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

 Couscous:

·         1 medium zucchini, chopped

·         2 teaspoons olive oil

·         1-1/4 cups water

·         2 teaspoons hoisin sauce

·         1 package (5.8 ounces) roasted garlic and olive oil couscous

That does seem like a lot of ingredients but if you notice a few items are listed twice because they are needed in more than one step! And I'll warn you now this recipe will only take you about 30 minutes (without taking pictures) and it does fly by! It was so easy and so quick!.

Your first step is to pound out the chicken to make them thinner. If you have thin chicken breasts already than you are set, we use the Weight Watchers chicken breasts and I only had to give them a couple smacks with the rolling pin. 

Then season with your salt, pepper, and ginger!

The next step I did was prepare the cranberry sauce mixture and then I set it aside. I should also say at this point I cut the recipe in half. Since I wasn't sure if this would make good leftovers I didn't want to waste food!

To make your cranberry sauce mixture you combine your cranberry from the can, hoisin sauce, brown sugar, salt and more ginger. When the time is ready, you will want to stir this all together and then heat on your stove top. Just heat it long enough to warm the sauce all the way through. But don't do this too soon otherwise you might burn it while waiting on your chicken and cous cous.

 Since this process all moves along fairly quickly I ended up missing some key shots...but you will need to do some prep work for your chicken. Once it's pounded out and seasoning you will need three bowls. Fill up one bowl with your panko crumbs, one with flour, and the other with a beaten egg. 

Then dip each chicken breast in the flour, then the egg, and finally your panko crumbs. 

Pour your olive oil into your pan, heat, then cook off those chicken breasts. Make sure to have your heat right or stay right by the stove so you don't burn them.

While the chicken is cooking I made the cous cous next. Grab a sauce pot and add your water and hoisin sauce. The original recipe calls for some zucchini sauteed in olive oil. Chuck hates zucchini and I only like it in muffins or breads so we skipped that step but for all you Zucchini lovers make sure to have that on hand!

Bring the water and hoisin sauce mixture to a boil. Add in the couscous, remove from heat, stir, then let sit for 10 minutes.

At this point you can start heating up your cranberry mixture and your chicken should be almost cooked. 

After the 10 minutes have passed on the couscous, fluff with a fork and get ready to plate your food!

We added green beans because we both wanted a veggie! Side note - broccoli would be an excellent side veggie for this dish!

We both loved this recipe! It was fast, easy, and so amazingly good. The flavors combine really well together, which I will admit I was a little skeptical when I first saw this recipe.

Of course as we are eating we dissect the meal apart and figure out ways to make it better, or things to substitute out, I'd say that's Chuckles and I ritual with new recipes.

With most of the recipes, like this one, we really don't need anything to be changed! The only thing we are doing with this one is.....trying it with pork and turkey! The cranberry hoisin sauce would be absolutely amazing on top of a pork chop or some leftover Thanksgiving Turkey!! I can't wait! In fact we are having this same recipe using pork in a week or so!!

All in all a great new recipe! I recommend everyone try this at least once! It may sound a little different, but different is good and this recipe is GREAT!

Enjoy!

P.S. You can find the original recipe here.