Pineapple Chicken and Rice

This is my last chicken meal for the week and also my favorite.  It was my favorite because it was the quickest.  I make this meal often but I try to add new elements to make it better each time.  This time I was in the grocery store and found some cool things in the asian food section of Harris Teeter.  I found fortune cookies and black sesame seeds.  These two things made this meal extra fun.  At the end of dinner, everyone opened their cookies and got great fortunes, except for me.  Mine said “pick another cookie.”  Go figure.

To start, I loosely chopped my pineapple, onion and bell peppers because I wanted them chunky and used my rice cooker to make my rice sticky.

When I was done cooking the meat and veggies, I mixed in an easy, sweet pineapple sauce while everything was still in the skillet.  When the chicken and sauce was well blended, I scooped it out of the skillet and put it on top of a bed of rice.  I garnished the meal with black sesame seeds and a fortune cookie for a fun twist.

Ingredients:

• 8 oz can diced pineapple, reserve 1/3 cup juice
• 1/3cuplow sodium soy sauce
• 1/3cuplow sodium chicken stock
• 1/3 cup of honey
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 2tsp cornstarch
• 1 tbs toasted sesame seed oil
• 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1-inch cubes
• 1 onion, sliced
• 1 bell pepper, sliced
• black sesame seeds, for garnish (optional)
• fortune cookies (optional)
• rice, for serving
• salt and pepper, to taste

Directions:

1.  In a medium saucepan, whisk together the pineapple juice, honey, soy sauce, chicken stock and cornstarch. Bring the mixture to a boil and cook until the mixture is the consistency of syrup. Set the sauce aside.