Sesame Chicken

CNN did a story this week about how unhealthy and fattening chinese food is for you. This came as no shock to me, I've always known every yummy, greasy bite was full of fat and sodium. The story did inspire me to start looking around for recipes so I could recreate one of our favorites at home, where I could control the ingredients at least somewhat. Sesame chicken is the only thing James will eat at Chinese restaurants, and it's usually my favorite too. I combined several different recipes from allrecipes.com to come up with this final product. It's still breaded and fried, but it's a lower sodium, all white-meat version of the original.

James told me all weekend he was going to be scared of this recipe, but the skeptic came around when he tasted it: "Babe, this is actually pretty dang good, can I have a lot more?" Yay!

Sesame Chicken

1/2 cup all-purpose flour (I KNOW I said no more white flour, but I was scared to try wheat flour. I'll try it next time!)
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder (a mixture of cinnamon, cloves, fennel, star anise, and white pepper)
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - cut into chunks
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 yellow onion, cut into wedges
1/2 cup green bell pepper, seeded and thinly sliced
1/8 cup low sodium teriyaki sauce
1/8 cup tablespoons honey

1 Tablespoon pineapple juice

2 Tablespoons sesame seeds

1 teaspoon brown sugar

DIRECTIONS
In a large resealable plastic bag, combine flour, black pepper, five-spice powder, and red pepper flakes. Place a few pieces of chicken at a time into the bag, and shake to coat. Remove to a platter.
Heat oil in a large skillet or wok over medium-high heat.

Place chicken into skillet, and brown on both sides, about 5 minutes.

Stir onion wedges and bell pepper slices into the skillet with the chicken; cook until slightly browned, about 2 minutes. Reduce heat to low.
In a separate bowl, mix honey, teriyaki, pineapple juice, brown sugar and sesame seeds. Add it to the chicken and vegetables, stir until sauce thickens.

I served it with a box of Simply Asian noodles.

3/26 Edit: I made this a second night in a row tonight, but skipped the flour and used the same amount of seasonings to season the dry raw chicken breasts pieces. Then I sauteed the chicken in a pan with a little cooking spray, and did the rest according to the recipe. It turned out great! I would cut down some on the red pepper flakes, for some reason skipping the dredging escalated the heat a lot! It's a little different, but a much lower-fat alternative that will be great for normal dinners. It passed the James test too!