Friday, October 11, 2013

Chicken with Black Bean Sauce

I have been trying to figure out how to recreate PF Chang's Chicken with Black Bean sauce for years. I've never been able to find a recipe and have tried mulling things over in my head with little success. A little over a year ago, a recipe blog I've been following posted a recipe for "Slow Cooker Garlic and Brown Sugar Chicken". I decided to give it a shot and change it a bit to see if it'd be a good jumping off point...also to see if this could be made WeightWatcher's friendly.  After several attempts to get it right, here's the current iteration that Hubby has deemed "perfected". It's now one of our go-to dishes and something for which I always have ingredients on-hand!

Chicken with Black Bean Sauce
Adapted from Six Sisters Stuff
Serves 8
Estimated Point Value: 5 pts

2 lbs chicken breasts
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
2/3 cup apple cider vinegar
1/3 cup chicken stock
1 Tablespoon garlic powder
2 Tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
2 Tablespoons corn starch
2 Tablespoons water
Red pepper flakes, optional/to taste - I just a few shakes, not too much

  1. Spray slow cooker with cooking spray and lay chicken on the bottom.
  2. Spread black beans over top of the chicken.
  3. In a small bowl combine brown sugar, vinegar, chicken stock, garlic powder, soy sauce, black pepper, and red pepper flakes.
  4. Pour the liquid mixture over the chicken and beans, cover and cook on low for 8 hours (or high for 4 hours).
  5. Remove chicken from the slow cooker, shred and return to the slow cooker.
  6. Combine corn starch and water in a small bowl and then add to the slow cooker, stirring until sauce thickens.
I serve this over 3 pts worth of brown rice with a side of our go-to zero point veggie, broccoli (we buy it in bulk because we're crazy people...who love broccoli.) I've frozen the chicken and sauce mixture and it thaws out nicely too if you aren't able to use the entire batch.