Spicy Honey Lime Chicken

While I wasn’t in love with the final flavour of this honey lime chicken, I did love the tender, smoky, and slightly spicy cutlets. Therefore, I’m saying “pass the chicken” instead of “pass on this chicken.”

I was excited to use the chipotle and the adobo sauce. I also chose to use the marinade as a sauce. I think if you have a sweet tooth, you may be impressed by these flavours. I prefer just a hint of sweetness to balance out all the flavours. I also missed the chipotle punch that was overpowered by the honey.

This honey lime chicken was fabulous! It was a bit spicy, but not too much, and really juicy. I highly recommend serving it with the marinade so don’t skip the step of heating up the sauce!

I served the chicken over Right Rice’s Cilantro Lime Rice and topped it with cherry tomatoes, the sauce, and La Costena Green Mexican Salsa.

I wanted to make this spicy honey chicken dish because the ingredient list sounded delicious. We have limes from our tree that need to be used, and I knew the dish would come together in a flash. It’s perfect for a weeknight meal, lunch, or BBQ with friends. There’s a nice smoky hint from the chipotle and a refreshing tang from the lime.

Instead of serving the dish with raw tomatoes, I roasted grape tomatoes using cumin, salt, lime juice, and oil and served them on top of the chicken with some pre-made salsa verde I had in the fridge. Turned out great. I’ll definitely make this again.

I served the chicken some leftover Latin-inspired rice with some fresh cilantro on top, which complemented the chicken well.

We served this spicy honey lime chicken sans sauce with roasted corn and cauliflower rice.

I wasn’t impressed with the flavor of the chicken on its own at all. It was lacking. So I shredded some and added tomatillo salsa, and that definitely helped.

I then tried tossing some of the shredded meat in the reduced sauce and serving it as tacos with avocado crema. This was very good. I was torn about whether to give this a Testers’ Choice as I had to zhuzh it quite a bit for it to work, but it is quite delicious with the right accouterments.

This honey lime chicken is an easy, tasty, and fun dish to prepare and eat! Even with impending rain, I had the urge to grill today, and once I had a can of chipotles in adobo sauce, I was good to go. My wife and daughters went shopping and came home with chicken breast tenderloins which were perfect for this recipe.

Assembling the honey lime chicken marinade was a breeze, but one drawback was the cloying sweetness of the honey (1/4 cup is a LOT of honey in this application). In the future, I would probably use a more neutral sweetener like agave syrup.

Grilling time was mercifully short (I was low on propane), and I put some nice grill marks on the meat. I did reserve the marinade for sauce. It wasn’t thickening like I would have preferred, so I added a little cornstarch and water, which did the trick, and helped the sauce cling to the meat.

The meat reminded me of the fajitas I came to love when I lived in Texas many years ago, so after slicing the cutlets into thin strips, I served this two ways: taco-style with rice and flour tortillas, which my family could spruce up with the usual toppings–lettuce, tomato, shredded cheese, and sour cream–and fajita-style with sautéed green pepper and onions. I tried one of each, and while the taco toppings were good, I preferred the fajitas-style. I will make this again, to be sure.

This is a quick and delicious way to make moist and flavorful shredded chicken in an Instant Pot. I’m glad to have discovered it.

I found that simmering the sauce down uncovered on sauté in the Instant Pot didn’t concentrate it as much as I wanted, so after 10 minutes of trying that, I simmered it in a small saucepan on the stove for less than 5 minutes, until the consistency was more sauce-like. Wow. It was good. (I didn’t strain it.)

The parts of the chicken that didn’t get fully sauced were a little lime heavy (it really does come through), but the sauce and chicken mixed thoroughly together made for a dish that was quite well-balanced. We really liked the sauce made from the marinade.

The first time I made this, I served it with warmed pita bread and an antipasto salad. I offered the salsa (but not tomatoes) for serving.

The second time I served it in soft tacos (lettuce, tomato, spiced roasted chickpeas, habanero cheddar, and additional salsa verde) with sour cream mashed potato patties alongside.

I made the Instant Pot variation of spicy honey lime chicken. The cooking method is spot on for tender, moist, and easy-to-shred chicken. Chicken thighs would be a nice alternative to breast meat.

I rubbed the dry seasonings on the breasts after patting them dry. After mixing the wet ingredients together in a small bowl, I poured that mixture into the Instant Pot and then added the chicken. When the cooking process was complete, I cooked the juices on sauté mode for 10 minutes to reduce while I shredded the chicken. The shredded chicken absorbed all the juices when tossed together with the sauce.

To serve, I rolled the shredded chicken in flour tortillas and smothered them with enchilada sauce to turn them into baked chicken enchiladas. The lime juice shines through, so if you want to amp up the spice, I suggest doubling the onion powder, cumin, and chipotle.

Next time I make this, I would add sliced onions and green peppers or jalapenos to the Instant Pot while cooking, and I might reduce the lime to 1/4 cup.

This spicy honey lime chicken is a perfect warm-weather dish, but it’s so versatile you can make it during a long, cold winter when you need a taste of summer. It’s a wonderful combo of flavors, too: sweetness from the honey, spice from the chiles, tartness from the limes.

I’d recommend making the fresh green salsa to go with the chicken. For us, that took it over the top and deeper into TC territory. For those who are not fans of spiciness, the heat level can easily be dialed down…or up for those who like it really hot.

The honey lime chicken recipe was straightforward and simple. The biggest challenge was slicing the chicken breasts horizontally. I wasn’t able to get a nice even cut, so I ended up with some pretty thin cutlets, which meant I had to watch them more closely on the grill.

I highly recommend simmering the marinade into a sauce. Let it simmer for 10 to 15 minutes, and you’ll end up with a nice, thick sauce that matches well with the salsa.

This lime chicken marinade is quite tasty and complex, with a good balance of chipotle smoke, citrus, and sweetness from the honey. I used 4 pounds of skinless, boneless thighs for a cookout, so I doubled the marinade recipe. I was a bit reluctant to use the marinade for a sauce, so I served the thighs with store-bought salsa verde.

Next time I’ll make extra marinade and hold some aside to reduce for a sauce. This is a delicious, quick, and versatile recipe–the chicken would make great sandwiches with bacon, arugula, and red onion. There’s a menu plan right there!

I found this spicy chicken dish to be extremely flavorful and reasonably easy, which was nice. I also appreciate the number of ways in which it can be enjoyed. I chose to cook chicken breasts on a charcoal grill but will also be giving the kabobs a try.

The pressure cooker option would be an outstanding weeknight meal that can marinate during the day, then be finished and on the table within minutes of arriving home. Once you have the fundamentals of the recipe down, it’s then up to you how you choose to make it.

Of course, the versatility of this recipe wouldn’t be that important if it didn’t taste good, but it does! The ingredients work together nicely, and the recipe is excellently written.

Being able to marinate for four hours yielded excellent results. And don’t be afraid to make a little extra marinade because it’s delicious. Using it to baste toward the end of cooking and for drizzling when serving is absolutely the way to go in my opinion. The salsa verde suggestion is also a great addition.