Mom's Meals: Honey Mustard Chicken

Today I'm sharing with you another one of my mom's recipes that is obviously awesome (I mean, do you expect anything less when you come to this little corner of the internet?) but here are reasons to validate aforementioned awesomeness:

1. You only need 5 ingredients.

2. You probably already have some of these ingredients

3. These ingredients are SO easy to find in the stores if you don't have them!

Everyone knows (read: I adamantly believe) that grocery shopping is difficult.* So, when you have to track down cream of tartar or french fried onions amidst aisles of chaos it's just like COUNT ME OUT. I'll end up in an aisle of cleaning supplies, deodorant, and greeting cards and that's after asking for help. I've been going to the same Target for ~3 years now and can never remember where the Kleenex are. My lack of any sense of direction combined with my general unawareness really comes out in grocery shopping scenarios. 

So, honey mustard chicken = hardly any ingredients = less grocery store induced panic. Here they are:

1 chicken, cut up, or preferred chicken pieces (with bones)
1/4 cup butter, melted (half a stick)

1/2 cup honey

1/4 Dijon-style mustard

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Isn't it funny how Honey Mustard Chicken has honey AND mustard in it? The first time I made it it was like *ding*ding*ding! A both shocking and obvious revelation. Kind of like when I realized that the first letter in the Disney logo was a "D."

In case you don't know how those ingredients look, I moonlight as a photographer ;)

Honey comes in bear-shaped containers and NEVER expires! (Next blog post: a love letter to honey.)

Ingredients not pictured: chicken & pepper. Even you know what those look like. And most people already have pepper. I say most because one time I was cooking right after I moved to Madison for a job and I had to buy salt. I distinctly remember one of my friends making fun of me saying, "You had to buy salt!?!?!?!" As if no one else ever has ever had to buy salt. And everyone else's apartments (and homes) come equipped with water, heat, and salt. So if you have to buy pepper, no judgment.

Now that you've got you're stuff, here's what you do:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Place chicken in baking dish and sprinkle with pepper.

Melt butter in microwave, stir in honey and mustard.

Pour over chicken.

Bake uncovered for one hour, basting every 15 minutes until chicken is tender and brown.

the mixture.

covering the chicken and basting is important so it doesn't burn.

Let this be a lesson to you: I basted (which is just pouring the sauce back over the pieces) twice instead of 3 times, and see how it burned a little? Still delicious though!

Let me know what you think! (And if you have any tips on photographing food! I find it much harder than expected.) This is also great leftover, so if you make some on Sunday it's a nice thing to have for lunch at work throughout the week. Enjoy!

p.s. ICYMI: Chicken Stir Fry
p.p.s. My goal for my next recipe is to use something other than chicken, but I can't make any promises.

*Not quite as hard as managing mail, but definitely harder than sitting on the couch and reading memoirs for hours on end.