It’s a special day in our house…today is our oldest’s Sweet 16 birthday. To celebrate, I am making her new favorite, Crock Pot Pineapple Chicken Quesadillas, aka, Hawaiian Chicken!
CROCK POT BARBECUE PINEAPPLE CHICKEN, also known as Hawaiian Chicken – This awesome, 3 ingredient slow cooker chicken can be served over rice with your favorite vegetables, made into barbecue sandwiches or quesadillas. A versatile chicken recipe that’s simple to make, so good. A family favorite!
Quesadillas above are made with the shredded BBQ Pineapple Chicken and Cheddar Cheese, with pineapple salsa for dipping.
Pinnable Image

Ingredients
- 3 lbs Chicken Breast (uncooked and *thawed)
- 20 oz can of Pineapple (sliced or chunks – drained – cut to bite size)
- 18 oz bottle of BBQ Sauce (I use Sweet Baby Ray’s – use your favorite)
- 1 tsp of Crushed Red Pepper (optional – see tip below)
Directions
Spray crock-pot with non stick cooking spray. Place chicken breast on bottom of crock-pot. Mix BBQ sauce, drained pineapple and crushed red pepper together, pour over chicken. Cook on low for approximately 6-8 hours, until tender. Enjoy over rice with steamed veggies, or shred to make BBQ sandwiches or yummy quesadillas!
Tips
Cooking times may vary from crock pot to crock pot, adjust cooking time according to your slow cooker. The crushed red pepper makes it a little spicy/hot. If you don’t care for spicy, reduce the amount of red pepper to 1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon, or just skip the red pepper.
One more tip…to get all the BBQ sauce out of the bottle, I poured approximately 2 Tablespoons of the juice from the can of pineapples into the bottle and shook it up!
If you LOVE pineapple, add more…you can’t add too much!
Thanks so much for stopping by!
Cheers!

Hey, this sounds great! I love pineapple chicken (usually add shrimp to it) and this should be awesome. AND it can be very LOW SODIUM, for us folks who have that restriction. I make my own salt-free BBQ sauce so that way it will be very low-salt. Thanks for this recipe.
If you have been cooking frozen meats in a crockpot for years, you didn’t get sick or die, why change now?
I got drums and thighs for avreally great price and I used them for this recipe after removing the skin. The chicken fell right off of the bone (6 hrs on high). I just pulled out the bones and it was a delicious way to use the inexpensive chicken!! Thanks
*For anyone experiencing "dry" chicken, there are a few fixes:
1.Substitute breasts for thighs. Dark meat can handle longer cooking times better.
2.Choose a smaller sized CrockPot. You can aim for filling them 2/3's full.
3.Cook for less time.
This could easily be adjusted for two people – use 2 to 3 chicken breasts (1 to 1.5 lbs), 1 1/4 cups BBQ sauce, a small can of pineapple and a few dashes of pepper flakes.
Hi Mary, how do you adjust this recipe for just two people?
Was your frozen chicken raw or cooked?
Raw 🙂