Aussie Chicken Recipe - Honey Mustard Chicken

This chicken dish is soooo good ~ a fan favorite here at Happy Healthy Home.  I have tweaked the original so time to write it up. It's a great Costco supper, meaning mostly everything can be purchased at Costco, and since I'm a Costco kinda girl...it works for me!

Aussie Chicken
Ingredients ~
4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts 
2 tsp. Lawry's season salt

6 slices bacon, cut up (Costco all natural! I use a scissors to quickly snip into pieces)

1/3 cup honey (buy locally)
1/2 cup yellow mustard 
1/4 cup mayonnaise (might increase to 1/2 cup next time)

1 cup fresh mushrooms (cut up small, cause that's how we like 'em)

1-2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
parsley for garnish

Here are the steps~
1. Thaw chicken if needed. Rub or sprinkle season salt on chicken, both sides. Cover and refrigerate at least 30 minutes. 

2. Mix up honey mustard sauce- honey, mustard and mayo. Set aside.

3. In a skillet fry up bacon until crisp, place bacon on a plate. 

4. In same skillet, using a bit of bacon drippings, cook chicken 3-4 minutes per side. (brown them off)

5. Assemble your dish- 
Spray 9x13 pan with nonstick cooking spray.
Place chicken in pan.
Give each chicken piece a spoonful of honey mustard sauce. (save sauce and heat to serve alongside)
Place mushrooms over chicken, then the bacon pieces. 
Sprinkle with the cheddar cheese.

6. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. (at some point you should preheat the oven but I'll let you decide when to do that.)

7. Plate chicken over rice, garnished with parsley, drizzled with sauce.

This dish has several steps but if you break them down it can really be a nice fancy dinner at home. You can fry up the bacon ahead of time or make your sauce in the morning. Most of all enjoy!

Oven Fried Chicken

Today we have a man's meal. One of my readers wrote to me expressing his extreme "horror" over my cabbage bake recipe. So, Mr. T (yes, Mr. T reads my blog!...I pity the fool!) to help him and anyone else that was scared of my recipe yesterday I give you...

Oven Fried Chicken
I have readers who are scared of cabbage but I also know I have readers who are scared of RAW chicken. Be afraid of sky-diving and bungee jumping but no need to fear the chicken. It's easy peasy, I'll tell you how!

16 chicken thighs (or thighs/leg mixture) gasp! horrors! but you ARE going to leave the skin on this time. (In moderation it's not that bad for you and sure beats trying to skin the bugger!)

In a LARGE resealable plastic bag mix together:
1 and 1/2 cups flour (you will have left over but I get frustrated when I don't have enough coating mixture so I over do it a bit here)
2 tsp. paprika (essential. don't skip this.)
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper

This amount of chicken fills 2 (9x13) pans. So to get your pans ready, preheat oven to 425 degrees. Put 1/4 cup butter (that is half of a stick) into the pans and place your pans in the oven to allow the butter to melt. Once melted remove from the oven. Now you are ready for the chicken!

Keeping one "clean" hand and one "raw chicken" hand~ Add the thighs to the bag one at a time and shake to coat with the flour mixture.

Place skin side down in melted butter. Once all chicken is coated and placed in pans ~ Bake for 30 minutes. Then turn the chicken pieces over and bake another 30 minutes...perfection!
This recipe does make enough for a crowd (or several leftovers) it can easily be cut in half.

This is soooo good and the gross factor of raw chicken is pretty minimal. Remember to wash up good with hot soapy water! My dad says this is "better than Aunt Lizzie's fried chicken" and that's really sayin' something. Making it in the oven you really avoid the mess of fried chicken on a stove top.

In fact, this is so good if my family and I are starting to look a little chunky-lumpy to you this would ah, be the reason why! :-) 


For a printable recipe click here and scroll to bottom of page to "print page".

Black Bean Burritos

This turned out way too tasty to not write the recipe down and it turned out waaaayy too tasty to get a picture of it first. 

Black Bean Burritos
2 chicken breasts (cut up and cooked, although the meat in here is totally optional, next time I'm leaving it out)
1/2 onion cut up (could use a whole onion)
1 green pepper cut up
Saute the onion and pepper in a little olive oil. Then add:
1 cup corn (mine was organic frozen, canned would work too)
1 (15oz) can rinsed and drained black beans
1 can Ro-Tel (did.not.know what all the hoopla was about this product until we tried it. Yum! Total hoopla here now!)
When all warmed in skillet add in
4 oz cream cheese and stir in to melt.


Serve in tortilla's with all the fixin's. Shredded cheddar cheese, salsa, sour cream and a few tortilla chips.

Chili with Kellie

A goal we have for our family is that our children would cook one meal per month for the family. Well, it sorta, kinda worked but starting with January we are enforcing :-) this goal. 

So tonight is Kellie's night. She has a delicious smelling Chili simmering away on the stove while she plays in the snow outside. That's right, my girl is a multi-tasker all the way!

This is an adaptation of the "Phone Lady's" Chili but here we go:

Kellie's Chili
1 lb. ground beef or chuck
2-3 carrots peeled, and chopped
2 cups cut up celery
1/2 - 1 onion cut up
1 cup green pepper cut up
In a large stock pot, brown off the ground meat, then add the remaining ingredients to saute' vegetables.

Add in:
2 large cans of V-8 Juice (tried to save money here by using generic brand tomato juice, it was okay but was certainly missing something in taste we were used to with the V-8)
2 cans of chili beans, do not drain
1 large can of pork and beans, do not drain


Stir together and simmer for a couple hours. Sometimes I'll throw it in the crock pot and let it go all day. But tonight Kellie put it together around 3:30 and it'll simmer until 5 or so. Perfect.


She also made Sweet Cornbread too. Can't wait for supper. My tummy's growling! grrrrrr!

 Don't forget the sour cream and cheese!

Sweet Cornbread recipe coming soon!

Tastes just like the Jiffy Box cornbread but homemade!

Best Pan-Fried Pork Chops

I tried something different for dinner tonight and it turned out great. This is from Cook's Illustrated Nov/Dec. 2010 Issue. 

I read their article "Improving Pan-Fried Pork Chops"- wow, those people over at Cook's Illustrated sure make a chemistry experiment about food. Very interesting reading. I was curious if all their tedious instructions to breading a meat item would really make that much difference. 

Well, the family was pleased so that's enough confirmation for me.

Here is what I did tonight:

3 pork loins (I had A LOT of breading mixture and milk left over could definitely cover much more)

2/3 Cup cornstarch

1 cup buttermilk (I NEVER have this on hand so I did 1 cup milk with a tablespoon of lemon juice, stir, let sit 5 minutes)

2 tbsp. dijon mustard

1 tsp. garlic salt

3 cups cornflakes crushed

vegetable oil for frying

Place 1/3 cup cornstarch in shallow dish. In another dish/bowl whisk buttermilk, mustard and garlic til smooth. Process cornflakes, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper and 1/3 cup cornstarch in food processor. (putzy! you could just crush cornflakes in a bag with a rolling pin and mix in the other ingredients...kind of a pain to clean out the food processor for that little bit...but to each his own!)

So you have a dish of cornstarch mixture, one dish of the milk mixture and one dish of your cornflake crumb mixture. 

Cross hatch your pork loin with a knife, both sides. Then dredge in cornstarch (the feel of the cornstarch on the meat really gave me the willies- like cotton or nails on a chalkboard kinda thing). Then dip in milk mixture, then coat with breadcrumbs.

Place on a plate until all pork is coated.

Get your skillet or fry pan nice and hot with some oil in it and fry these about 5-6 minutes each side. 

The breading was very nice and crispy- not soggy at all, which is what the chemist's over there said it would be. 

I did deviate some from ALL their instructions but I'm a Mama cooking for a family, not a test kitchen. 

Then this went in the frying pan, never to be seen again. No picture- but they were so nice looking, perfectly browned and dee-licous. 

I served this with Linguine with a red sauce and normandy vegetables.

If you really want to see the Cook's Illustrated Crispy Pan Fried Pork Chops you can head over here but, it looks like you have to sign up to see anything.

Head over HERE for a printable recipe. Scroll to the bottom to "print this page".

Ham and Cheese Pasta Dish

This is from Taste of Home Dec/Jan 2011. It turned out SO good! I made a few modifications (as usual) so here is my recipe. (It is called Ranch Ham 'n' Cheese pasta in the magazine.)

 Ham and Cheese Pasta Dish
1 (16 oz) pkg penne pasta
1 Tbsp. butter
1 Tbsp. flour
1 Cup milk
2 tsp. dried parsley flakes
1 tsp. garlic salt (will change this to garlic powder to reduce salt)
1/4 tsp. pepper
1/2 tsp. onion salt (will change this to onion salt to reduce salt)
1/2 tsp. dill weed
1 cup sour cream
2 cups cubed ham
1 cup cheddar cheese

Cook pasta according to package directions: drain.

In skillet melt butter, whisk in flour until smooth. Add milk and seasonings. Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes until thickened.

Reduce heat; Fold in sour cream until blended. Add ham and pasta; cook and stir until heated through. Add cheese. When melted it is ready to serve.

I'm going to try this with other meats like chicken or ground beef but also plan on serving this as a vegetarian main dish with broccoli/cauliflower added. Or just a fancy side dish with the wonderful sauce and pasta.

For a clean printed copy of this recipe click here. Scroll down to bottom of the page and click print for an ad free print out.