Recently I have become obsessed with mustard. Not corn dog, scary yellow mustard, or the little parking lot packet that you step on, squirting it across the asphalt type of mustard. I mean real mustard, with real mustard seeds. Delicious honey mustard.
Obsessed with Honey Mustard
I’ve been trying different mustard recipes, but without much success. But that doesn’t mean that deliciousness didn’t happen. But the result morphed into something else that we could enjoy, albeit not a jarred type of honey mustard. In the true spirit of a foodie, I chose to make an edible mistake. This Honey Mustard Chicken with Spinach Salad was the result of a failed jarred honey mustard attempt.
Traditional mustards do not use eggs, or so I have been told. Nonetheless, there are plenty of mustard recipes out there that do include eggs, even though they are more of a mustard emulsion/vinaigrette. I’m not sure what was on my mind, but the orginal recipe for this egg based mustard required cooking. I forgot to cook my test recipe, but voila! Something else.
Delicious Spinach Salad
If you are concerened about the uncooked eggs, don’t be. While the chicken bakes, the eggs in the vinaigrette will cook. And when you heat the vinaigrette for the spinach salad, the eggs will cook. When used as a warmed salad dressing, you will get some cooked threads of egg, but that didn’t really bother me.
I even used a bit of the dressing as a condiment for the chicken, but make sure you don’t use any of the leftover basting vinaigrette as a condiment. Even though the dressing has uncooked eggs, I felt that the added vinegar mitigated any risk. I don’t feel the same way about raw chicken juice. Simply discard any small amount of dressing that may have come in contact with the chicken through the basting brush.
Be Creative with Garnishes
You can top the salad with any number of garnishes, but the season right now calls for lovely ripe pears or apples, so that is what I used. You can substitute chopped green onions for the onion slivers, or even use some toasted almonds, or the traditional bacon bits. Warm spinach salad with honey mustard vinaigrette is hard to beat, no matter how you garnish it.
There will be more mustard recipes soon, but here is a good one for right now. Not exactly true mustard, but a lovely and easy baked chicken recipe.
Honey Mustard Chicken with Spinach Salad
- Prep Time: 10 min
- Cook Time: 1 hour
- Total Time: 1 hour 10 minutes
- Yield: 8 servings 1x
- Category: Main Dish
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: US
Ingredients
2 oz. dry prepared ground mustard (62g)
1 extra-large egg
4 oz. honey (125g)
½ cup apple cider vinegar (120ml)
Juice of 1 lemon
1 cup olive oil (240 ml)
2 lbs. chicken, cut into pieces
10 oz. fresh spinach (285g)
1 ripe pear or apple
Onion slivers to taste
Salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
In the container of a blender, combine the mustard, egg, honey, vinegar and lemon juice. Blend briefly to combine well. With the blender running, slowly drizzle a thin stream of olive oil into the vortex of the blender. When all of the olive oil is added, turn off the blender and store the vinaigrette in the refrigerator until ready for use.
Line a large baking pan with parchment and heat your oven to 400°F (204°C). Place the chicken pieces in the pan. Pour about ½ cup (120ml) of the vinaigrette into a separate bowl, and brush generously onto the chicken pieces. Season with salt and freshly cracked black pepper.
Place the pan in the oven and bake the chicken without turning for 45-50 minutes.
Before the chicken is finished cooking, place the remainder of the vinaigrette in a large microwavable mixing bowl. Heat on high for about 1 minute. Remove the bowl from the microwave and whisk the dressing until smooth. Add the fresh spinach, tossing to coat well. The heat from the dressing will cause the spinach to wilt, so don’t worry about the volume of the spinach.
Place the spinach in a bowl, and garnish with sliced pear or apple, onion slivers and freshly cracked black pepper. Serve alongside the chicken.
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