In This Sheet-Pan Chicken Dinner, Two Kinds of Mustard Are Better Than One
In the door of my fridge right now, there are four open jars of mustard: a Dijon, a country-style Dijon, a French whole grain (old-style) mustard, and an English spicy yellow mustard. All that might seem excessive, but each mustard has a distinct flavor and texture that I deploy in specific occasions. And hey, they last a long time, so why not have the full array?
Usually, though, I don't use more than one kind of mustard in a single meal. And when I'm developing recipes for you, my dear readers, I think carefully about every ingredient that I add to the recipe and make sure it's there for a very good reason. But when I was testing out this new, easy sheet-pan honey mustard chicken dinner, two jars of mustard made all the difference. You probably already have Dijon in your fridge, right? In that case, all you'll need to buy for this recipe is a jar of old-style whole grain mustard.
It all started because I was craving honey-mustard chicken. A honey mustard marinade works best with a smooth mustard like Dijon; you want the tangy mustard to really mix well with the honey so it's easy to distribute in all the chicken's nooks and crannies. To roast a side dish at the same time as the main, I added halved little creamer potatoes to the sheet pan as well. One thing to keep in mind: honey mustard-marinated chicken releases a lot of juices, so if you want those potatoes to be crispy, arrange the the chicken legs snuggly together in the center of the sheet pan, with the potatoes around the perimeter.
All that sweet honey-mustard flavor cried out for bitter greens on the plate, so I added frisée and parsley to each serving, nudging the greens between the hot potatoes so they warmed and softened ever so slightly. If you can't find frisée, escarole also works just fine.
In one of the early renditions of this dish, I just drizzled a Dijon mustard vinaigrette over each little side salad, and it was just kind of meh. So the next time I made it, on Senior Editor Maggie Hoffman's suggestion, I used a punchy whole grain (old-style) mustard in the dressing instead, and drizzled it liberally over not only the salad and potatoes, but the chicken as well. The whole mustard seeds in old-style French mustard are delightfully crunchy, bursting with a pleasant pickly-tart spiciness as you bite into them. Whisked into a vinaigrette, they add exciting texture and flavor in a way that a single, smooth mustard never could.
Double-the-Mustard Chicken with Potatoes and Greens
Originally Appeared on Epicurious
