Recipes
- Thai Chicken and rice- https://www.jocooks.com/recipes/crockpot-thai-chicken-thighs/
- Hot honey chicken sandwiches – https://www.everydayeileen.com/slow-cooker-hot-honey-chicken-sandwiches/
- Air fryer chicken and veggies – https://www.eatwell101.com/air-fryer-chicken-recipe
Products (affiliate links)
Video Summary
Brief Summary: My Small Appliance Challenge Day
I decided to make all my meals using just small appliances today to keep the kitchen cool during summer heat.
What I Made:
- Crock Pot Hot Honey Chicken – I started with this for lunch, cutting the recipe in half since we’re a family of two. Used a spice rub with cayenne, paprika, and garlic salt, then added honey, brown sugar, and butter. It turned out amazing! Perfect balance of sweet and spicy – not overly honey-forward like some recipes. Definitely making this again.
- Air Fryer Steak and Zucchini – Super simple using pre-marinated garlic butter steak bites from my freezer meal prep and fresh zucchini from a neighbor’s garden. Seasoned the zucchini with salt and garlic, cooked everything together for 10 minutes. The steak was so much more tender than when I’ve used roast in the past.
- Pressure Cooker Thai Chicken – This was my experiment! I tried a new technique of cooking rice and chicken simultaneously using a steamer insert. The flavors were interesting with sesame oil, fish sauce, coconut milk, red curry paste, and peanut butter, but honestly it didn’t quite work out. The rice was undercooked, so I mixed it into the sauce. The flavor combination was too weird for me – I’d make curry chicken OR peanut chicken separately, but not together.
My Takeaway: Two out of three were winners! The hot honey chicken and steak/zucchini were delicious. The Thai experiment was edible but not something I’d repeat. Still, nothing went to waste and it was great not heating up the house!
Video Transcript
Welcome back. We are using small appliances for every single meal of this video. It’s an easy one to not have your oven or stove going because it can be so hot in the summer. So let’s jump right on in and make these dishes. We’re going to start by making Thai chicken in the pressure cooker. And I’m going to try making rice at the same time, but not in with it for the first time. So I need to find something that fits in here for the rice. So let me do that.
Okay, that’ll fit. I just need to find something to prop it up with. And while I get out all the ingredients and find the little insert, I’m going to bring you back to earlier today when I made Crock-Pot chicken. It’s a hot honey and it was so good. We had it for lunch.
Crock Pot Hot Honey Chicken
Hot honey chicken calls for a rub. So we are going to get a little bit of cayenne—half of a tablespoon. Actually, it’s a lot of bit of cayenne. And I am cutting this recipe in half because of course we’re a family of two, and that’s what we do. And I need half a teaspoon of paprika, a teaspoon of garlic salt—or half a teaspoon—and then that gets mixed together. And this is going to go on top of the chicken. So let’s get the chicken out and put it into the slow cooker.
Okay, we’ll start by spraying it, which I don’t usually do. It called to do that, though, so I did. I just grabbed out one package of chicken. That’s a little fatty. Let me get the chicken out. And then we’ll probably take the fat off of it. Let’s see. It ends up being three or four—four little chicken breasts. Let’s see if I can do this with the knife that I took the chicken out with. Yeah, good enough at least. Okay, what a way to not get another knife and plate dirty.
Okay, we are going to get this rub on here. This is what makes it hot. And then we need to add quite a bit of honey and a little bit of vinegar. So we’re going to add just a tiny little bit of white vinegar. I’m really interested to see how this turns out. Hopefully it turns out good. And then the brown sugar is supposed to be just sprinkled over the top. It’s interesting that it calls for brown sugar and honey.
Okay. And then last but not least is honey. Think we’re probably good there. Okay. So it says on low for 4 hours or high for 2 hours. So we will see it back again in a few hours here.
Guys, I forgot the butter. We need to add a few pats of butter on here. That’ll make it delicious.
Okay, this chicken is looking delicious. I just need to get it shredded up, and then we will make a sandwich. I had it in my mind that I was going to have all of these done at the same time, but I have not made the other two meals yet, and this one’s ready, and I am hungry. So that’s what I’m going to do. Although, I think I might just take this out and cut it instead of shredding it because that might be easier.
Okay, let’s give this a taste and get it on a sandwich. Got a bun here. It calls to put pickles on this. I don’t know if I’m feeling that. Let’s see.
Okay, here’s our sandwich. Probably be good with a salad on the side. Let’s taste a piece of this chicken.
That’s delicious. Mhm. Time for lunch. I think that’s the perfect amount of spice. It’s got like a nice tongue—what’s the word? I can feel it on my tongue. And it’s sweet, but it’s not overly sweet. A lot of honey chickens are just so honey forward. This one’s not. It’s delicious.
Pressure Cooker Thai Chicken
All righty. I think I’ve got everything out. I have not ever made a recipe quite like this before, so that’ll be interesting. I just got in a little bit of sesame oil. I’m going to put in some diced chicken thighs. And I’m not going to sear them first. I’ve realized it really doesn’t make a difference. But since we’re using the pressure cooker, we do need a little bit of water.
And then I’m going to add some fish sauce for flavor. Just a couple squirts. We’re going to add salt and pepper. And I’m going to use white pepper just because it’s a Thai dish. And then a little bit of red pepper flakes. We also need a little bit of Sriracha. And I don’t want to go too heavy on it.
Now, here’s where things get interesting. We need a little bit of coconut milk. That’s not interesting. But then we’re going to put some curry paste and peanut butter. So I’m just going to eyeball about 4 ounces or so of coconut milk. And then I’m going to put the rest—little overzealous—put the rest in there.
We need a couple tablespoons of red curry paste. So delicious. Mix that around a little bit just to get it off of my spoon. And then peanut butter. I’ve never done red curry paste and peanut butter before.
I want to take this and set it in here so I can then put the rice on top. I’m going to grab around a cup of basmati rice and give it a rinse, and we’ll get it in here.
I do want to clean up the side of this a little bit. I’m going to add just a little bit of water to there just to make sure I have enough, and then mix it up. It’s going to cook. It’s fine.
Okay, let’s get this right on top. So interesting. I have wanted to do this technique for so long. I’m excited that I’m finally going to try it. Come take a look. Have the meat and sauce down there. Then a little tray. And then we’ve got the rice. So hopefully this works out really well. I’m going to get the lid on, and then I’m going to get it turned on to the rice setting, and we’ll start on the next meal.
Air Fryer Steak and Zucchini
The next appliance I’m going to use is the air fryer, and I am going to make something super simple. It’s just going to be garlic butter steak bites with zucchini. And I already have the garlic butter steak bites ready to go because they were just a freezer meal. So I’m going to be able to just throw it on in here once I get this zucchini cut up.
This zucchini has some really big seeds, so I am going to take out those super big seeds in the middle, but I will leave some of it. Okay, these are the first zucchini from the garden, and they’re not even from my garden. That’s okay. I’m going make these pretty decent chunks.
And then here’s how simple this is. We are going to just take our steak that’s marinated. That was perfect timing. Get it in here. This has been thawing in my fridge overnight. I’m just spreading it out a little bit with the bag. And then I’m going to put the zucchini just in with it. And I’m going to then season the zucchini since it’ll be on top here with just a little bit of salt and pepper and garlic.
Actually, I’m not going to do the pepper. I’m just going to do salt and garlic. I think—I’ve also done this before where I’ve done—wait. Oops. That’s pepper. Well, all right. What did I do? I did potatoes and green beans, I think. Or was it potatoes and carrots? Maybe it’s potatoes and carrots, right? And I put this back down. And I just did air fry button with whatever temperature it came up. And I put 10 minutes. I don’t know if that’ll be right, but we’ll check it then.
Well, I forgot to start this. So it started now. And then over here, this just got done. I think I could have probably cut these. Yeah, they’re a little tough still. So I might take the steak out and then continue to cook those.
Taste Tests
Here is how the garlic butter steak and zucchini turned out. Let’s give it a taste. I’m going to try a piece of steak first because it’s been sitting out longer.
Mhm. It’s tender. The cut that I had was just steaks that I got on sale at Safeway. And that was so much better than using a roast like I did last time I did this. Let’s try zucchini.
Oh. Mhm. Mhm. That’s now perfectly cooked. I’m going to set this to the side. We have about 15 minutes left on the pressure cooker. Then we can taste that as well. And then I’ll decide which one I want for dinner, and my husband can do the same, and then we’ll have a little bit of meal prep.
This just finished cooking, and I did a quick release. I’m interested to see it. Oh, okay. It looks like it worked. Cool. So then the tricky part is going to be getting that out. So I got my canning gloves. The other ones are not water resistant. Okay.
Oops. Chicken. Grab a little bowl. Give this a little bit of a fluff. It’s going to be hot though. Okay. Seems full. Well, I think it’s cooked. Very coconutty. Okay, let’s see if it’s cooked.
Mhm. Well, that could be more cooked. So maybe that doesn’t work out quite as well. I might just dump that in with this because it’s a little soupy, and then it could just soak up the liquid. So that’ll actually work out really well. Let’s take this.
It’s an interesting scent. I’m going to do that. I’m going to take this and put it in there. It’ll soak up the liquid and kind of finish cooking. So that idea is good. I don’t know why that didn’t quite work the way I expected it to. Maybe because I didn’t use water. I don’t know.
Oh, you know what I did do though? I did completely rinse it and then drain it. A lot of times I leave a little bit of water in. Okay, there’s that. Mix that around. Still delicious looking. Haven’t tasted it yet.
Okay, here’s what the bowl looks like. And then here’s what it looks like in here after I added the extra coconut rice. And let’s give this a taste. I’m going to try just a piece of the chicken.
Those are some very interesting flavors. I wouldn’t say it’s bad, but it’s interesting. I probably wouldn’t make that again. I would make peanut chicken. I would make curry chicken. I don’t think I would make a combination of the two of them again. But it’s still edible. It’s still good. Tad too much salt.
Well, we win some, we lose some. We had two amazing meals today. This one, it’s still going to get eaten. It’s not going to go to waste. It’s not bad. It’s just not my favorite.
Anyways, if you enjoyed this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you’re new here and haven’t yet, please subscribe. Love to see you. I’ll leave some other small appliance videos here for you. And I’ll see you next time. Bye-bye.
