Honey Sesame Chicken

This honey sesame chicken recipe combines a simple homemade sauce with air fried or baked Perdue Lightly Breaded Chicken Breast Chunks, yellow bell pepper, green beans, and toasted sesame seeds. The entire dish comes together in under 30 minutes and will make you forget about takeout quite possibly forever.

I’ll provide a recipe walkthrough below, a recipe for sesame cauliflower rice to serve with your honey sesame chicken, and a printable recipe card at the bottom of the post. Let’s dive in!

Honey Sesame Chicken Recipe Walkthrough

Thanks to the Perdue Simply Smart Chicken Breast Chunks I mentioned above, this recipe is an easy one! All you’ll need to do is throw the chicken in an air fryer or on a baking sheet in the oven, add some green beans and bell pepper slices towards the end of cooking, and make a simple sauce on the stovetop to toss the chicken in.

If you have access to Costco, they have a product from Just Bare (and their own Kirkland brand) that’s very similar. Check out my air fryer sweet and sour chicken recipe, chicken and cauliflower bowls, or high protein Costco guide for a look at it in action.

You can also make a one-pan version of this recipe using ground chicken. Check out my ground chicken stir fry for an example.

How to Make Honey Sesame Sauce

If you think making your own sauce is too difficult, think again! Simply mix the sauce ingredients together and add to a skillet or saucepan. Cook the sauce over medium-high heat, stirring often to avoid any burning, until it’s reduced to a sauce.

How do you know when it’s ready? Take note of the two far right photos below. When the sauce has thick bubbles almost resembling foam, remove from the heat and see if you can create a trail with your spatula or whisk (far right photo).

Depending on your cookware, this should take around 10-12 minutes. Just in time to briefly cool before tossing with your cooked chicken and veggies.

This is the same sauce method I used for my Baked General Tso Chicken and Orange Chicken recipes. And like I mentioned in those, making your own sauce creates a rice and bold flavor that’s SO worth it. If you love the sauce, you can use it for other recipes like my air fryer chicken meatballs or baked chicken meatballs.

Oh and by the way, you could totally use the Perdue Chicken Breast Chunks in those recipes!

Air Fry or Bake the Perdue Chicken and Veggies

You can go either route. I used a 6.5-quart Ninja Foodi during recipe testing for this honey sesame chicken. Cook times may vary slightly in other air fryers.

As for the veggies, the recipe calls for adding them towards the end of air frying/baking. You want them to resemble a stir fried vegetable, not green bean fries or fajita peppers. That said, don’t sweat perfect timing on the vegetables—they’ll be fine.

And yes, picky eaters, you can omit the vegetables altogether.

Once your chicken and veggies are good to go, add to a bowl with sesame seeds, pour the sauce over, and toss. You can add the chicken and vegetables straight to the skillet with the sauce if the skillet is not too hot.  

And that’s it. Serve it up!

How to Make Sesame Cauliflower Rice

Speaking of serving, you can serve your honey sesame chicken any way you’d like. Since we try to keep things kinda healthy around here, I made a super simple sesame cauliflower rice to serve with mine. Here’s what you’ll need:

• 12oz bag of frozen cauliflower rice
• 1/2 tablespoon of toasted sesame oil, toasted sesame seeds, and toasted black sesame seeds
• 1/4 cup (12g) sliced green onion

Microwave the cauliflower rice and stir in the remaining ingredients. That’s it!

If you’re not a fan of cauliflower rice, you should try making the half calorie rice I mentioned in my hot honey sesame rotisserie chicken stir fry.

And if you prefer fried rice, check out my air fried cauliflower rice recipe.

Final Honey Sesame Chicken Recipe Notes

The nutrition information does not include any kind of rice. It’s for the chicken and vegetables only.

I’ve divided the recipe into 4 servings. If you’d like a specific weight for each serving, I’d suggest weighing the entire batch after cooking and dividing by 4 (or however many servings you’d like).

Scaling the Recipe

One bag of Perdue Chicken Breast Chunks contains 24 ounces of chicken. So if you wanted to use the entire bag for a meal prep batch of honey sesame chicken, multiply the sauce ingredients by 1.5.

All right, that’s all I have as far as notes go! If you have a question about this honey sesame chicken, drop a comment below or join my Facebook group with more than 10k healthy home cooks that would love to help you out!