Crispy, crunchy, sweet, salty, and with just a little bit of spice, Crunchy Honey Garlic Chicken is pan fried and then smothered in a honey garlic sauce.
Part chicken fried chicken, part sticky sweet chicken, and part spicy hot chicken, this Crunchy Honey Garlic Chicken recipe is one hundred percent delicious. It pulls the best parts of all three of these recipes together for one of the quickest, easiest, and tastiest recipes for chicken you’ll make this week!
Read on for some great tips for cooking Honey Garlic Chicken or click here to head straight to the recipe.
What’s In Honey Garlic Chicken?
This recipe uses chicken cutlets, which are chicken breasts that have been pounded thin. You can buy the chicken in cutlets or slice chicken breasts through the middle and pound them to an even thickness, like shown in this breaded chicken cutlet recipe. You could also use boneless skinless chicken thighs if you prefer, just pound them to 1/3 inch thick.
The chicken gets dredged in eggs and a just-spicy-enough breading mixture, seasoned with ginger and cayenne pepper. When fried in a skillet, the chicken gets so wonderfully crispy and crunchy.
The final component is the honey garlic sauce. It’s a sweet and savory sauce of honey and soy sauce. It sounds simple, which it is, but the flavor it out of this world.
Tips For Crunchy Honey Garlic Chicken
The key is to get the right amount of breading on the cutlets. Set up your dredging station with two shallow pans. Pie pans are perfect for this. The first is for the dry ingredients and the second is the wet ingredients. Start by placing the chicken breasts in the flour mixture (dry ingredients) and then move it over to the egg mixture (wet ingredients). Then place the egg covered breast back in to the flour mixture. Don’t worry about a little bit of the egg getting into the flour mixture. Those little lumps create super crunchy bits on the chicken. I actually gather some of them up and gently press them into the chicken.
Another important step is to heat the oil to 350˚F in a large skillet. I like to use my instant read thermometer to make sure that I have hit this temp, making sure that it doesn’t touch the bottom of the pan. That will give you a false reading.
The temperature will, obviously, affect the length of time that it takes for the chicken to cook. This means that the longer it is in the oil, the more greasy and tougher the chicken will be. We are definitely not after tough, greasy chicken. Check the temperature after you have fried the first batch to make sure that the oil has come back up to 350˚F before cooking the second batch of breasts.
Once the breasts are done frying, bathe them into the sauce covering both sides and enjoy with steamed rice and roasted broccoli. If you have any extra sauce, it’s great drizzled over the rice and broccoli.
More Great Chicken Recipes
If you love this recipe and just can’t get enough of that great combo of honey and garlic, you’ll want to try my Honey Garlic Pork Chops. I also have more great chicken breast recipes below.
- Breaded Chicken Cutlets
- Crispy Air Fryer Chicken Breast
- Best Baked Chicken Breasts
- Italian Chicken Breast Recipe
Podcast Episode On Making Honey Garlic Chicken
Listen to learn how to make this recipe, along with some great tips from Christine:
Crunchy Honey Garlic Chicken Recipe
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 15 minutes
- Total Time: 30 minutes
- Yield: 4 servings
- Category: Entrée
- Method: Stovetop
- Cuisine: American
DESCRIPTION
Crispy, crunchy, sweet, salty, and with just a little bit of spice, Crunchy Honey Garlic Chicken is pan fried and then smothered in a honey garlic sauce.
Ingredients
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1 Tbsp. cornstarch
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1/4 cup soy sauce
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2 tsp. black pepper, divided
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1 Tbsp. olive oil
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4 cloves garlic, minced
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1/2 cup honey
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1 cup flour
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2 tsp. salt
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2 tsp. ground ginger
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1 tsp. pepper
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1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
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2 eggs
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2 Tbsp. water
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4 chicken breast cutlets*
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Peanut, canola or grapeseed oil for frying
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 250F. Line a plate with paper towel. Set aside. Put an oven-safe wire rack on a baking sheet. Set aside.
- In a small bowl, whisk together the cornstarch and soy sauce. Add 1 teaspoon of the black pepper. Set aside.
- Heat a medium-sized sauté pan over medium heat. Add olive oil and garlic, cooking until the garlic becomes fragrant, about 1 minute. Stir in the honey and the cornstarch mixture. Bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook for 2 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.
- On a large plate, combine the flour, ginger, salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper. In a shallow bowl, whisk together the eggs and water.
- In a large skillet or sauté pan set over medium-high heat, heat about 3/4-inch of the oil to 350˚F as read on a candy thermometer.
- While oil heats, coat the chicken: Put one chicken cutlet into the flour mixture and turn to coat. Lift it out of the flour and shake to remove excess. Transfer it to the egg mixture and turn to coat. Return it to the flour mixture and coat both sides. Set coated chicken cutlet on a plate and repeat the process with the three remaining pieces of chicken.
- To the heated oil, add two chicken cutlets. Cook for 3 minutes on the first side. Turn with metal tongs, and continue cooking on the second side until cooked through and no longer pink inside, about 2 more minutes.
- Transfer chicken to the paper towel-lined plate. Turn to blot oil from both sides. Transfer chicken to wire rack on baking sheet and transfer to the warm oven.
- Cook the second two chicken cutlets as described above. Once cooked, blot on the paper towel. Transfer to the wire rack in the oven.
- Warm the honey sauce over medium heat just until hot. Remove rack of chicken from oven.
- Transfer chicken to a plate. Drizzle with the sauce. Turn chicken over and drizzle the other side. Serve immediately.
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Notes
*You can instead use 2 chicken breasts sliced through the middle and pounded to an even thickness, like explained here. Or, use boneless skinless chicken thighs, pounded to 1/3-inch thick.
This post originally appeared in December 2019 and was revised and republished in March 2023.