Sweet and Salty Chicken Tenders and Easy Honey Mustard Sauce

These sweet and salty chicken tenders will please everyone at the dinner table — and you’ll never believe what the secret ingredient in the breading is. This post also includes a yummy, homemade honey mustard sauce.

I wrote this review while participating in a campaign for Mom Central Consulting on behalf of Twinkies. I received samples and a promotional item to thank me for participating.



I’m always up for a kitchen challenge. So when I was asked to create a creative recipe using Twinkies to enter to be in the comeback edition of the Twinkie Cookiebook, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to think outside the box. I wanted to think outside the box, and after discussing it with Forrest, we decided to do some sweet and salty chicken tenders.

I know, Twinkies and chicken usually don’t go together (unless you’re having one for dessert after eating chicken!) But, I promise, this recipe might convince you otherwise. It took a little bit of tweaking, as well as some trial and error, to get the propotions right, but I honestly think we created something pretty amazing.

I thought the Twinkie breadcrumb idea was rather clever. Forrest put them in the food processor, and pulse them until it was crumbly. I was worried about the cream, but somehow it got all mixed in and you could hard tell. After we baked them for about 15 minutes, they were hard enough to pulse until they were fine like breadcrumbs.

We wanted to keep the spices that we added simple but still impactful enough to balance out the sweetness. We used pretty similar spices to what was in our Better-than-KFC chicken, and it seemed to be quite perfect, even after Jack poured in more paprika than we initially wanted. Jack knew best in this situation!

 

We melted a little bit of butter in the bottom of a dish, just to help them cook a little bit and add some more flavor. It all came together pretty quickly, and they definitely didn’t last long on the dinner table.

I thought that a honey mustard sauce would pair well with the chicken. So, I looked around at a few different recipes online and then put my own twist on it. Honey mustard is one of my favorite condiments, and I definitely think I will making it more often.

All in all, I think this dish was a major success. I really hope it gets into the Twinkie Cookbook — I don’t think many people would think something like this would be possible! If you think you have a creative dish, be sure to enter it in the recipe contest. I’d love to hear if you enter (and if you make this yummy dish!)