Apricot-Sesame Chicken

What a beautiful, delicious and healthy plate of joy! Moist chicken mingles with a sweet and tangy sauce of apricot preserves, soy sauce, mirin, and sesame. Flavors and textures soar, and are extraordinarily balanced. In one glorious bite, you get sweet, salty, nutty, tangy, moist, and crunchy. Even better news? You need just a handful of ingredients and less than 20 minutes.

The restaurant version of a dish like this (whether it's traditional sweet-and-sour chicken or sesame chicken) is brimming with fat thanks to an abundance of oil. Plus, the chicken is often deep-fried before its immersion into a sticky sweet and sour sauce. That's not the case here. First, the chicken isn't fried; it's pre-cooked and either shredded or cubed. Second, the sweetness in the sauce comes from fruit preserves, not a ridiculous amount of brown sugar and honey. Another bonus: The hint of apricot takes the dish beyond anything you'd find at your local Chinese joint. 

And note: Apricot preserves work incredibly well in recipes like this (adding sweetness AND flavor); but so does orange marmalade!

About the chicken: Since you use pre-cooked chicken, you have some options here. Choose a rotisserie chicken, grilled chicken from the salad bar, leftover chicken from a previous meal, or poach raw chicken breasts in boiling water for 10 to 12 minutes, until cooked through. Shred or cube the cooked chicken and use as instructed below.

Serving suggestion: I served the chicken and sauce over fluffy white rice and I suggest you do the same. The sauce is WAY too good to go waste. That said, a bed of Asian noodles (wheat or gluten-free) would be nice too. 

Apricot-Sesame Chicken

2/3 cup apricot preserves
1 cup chicken broth, divided
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon mirin (Japanese rice wine)
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon cornstarch
4 cups shredded or cubed cooked chicken
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Cooked rice or Asian noodles for serving
1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds
Chopped green onions for serving

In a large saucepan or high-sided skillet, combine the apricot preserves, 3/4 cup of the chicken broth, soy sauce, mirin, and sesame oil. Set the pan over medium heat and bring to simmer. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 5 minutes. Dissolve the cornstarch in the remaining 1/4 cup of broth and add the mixture to the pan. Simmer for 1 to 2 minutes, until the sauce thickens. Add the chicken and simmer for 1 to 2 minutes to heat through. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Spoon the chicken and sauce over rice or noodles and top with sesame seeds and green onions.
Serves 4