These chicken tenders with homemade honey mustard sauce are better than store-bought hands down. They are perfectly breaded, crispy, and loaded with flavor! Best vessel for dipping into our easy homemade honey mustard sauce, ketchup, or both! You can also make these into nuggets if you prefer that shape. The kids went absolutely nuts over them. Try them out and let us know what you think!
What you need to make chicken tenders with honey mustard + substitutions:
- Chicken breasts- Chicken breasts are ideal here to make chicken tenders! We’ve been getting our meat from ButcherBox and we LOVE it. We get the large custom box and it’s been awesome.
- All-purpose flour- This flour works great here, but all you really need to do is coat the chicken. You could substitute the whole wheat flour or gluten-free 1:1 all-purpose flour. I’m not sure if oat, coconut, or almond flour would work here as well.
- Eggs- Eggs are required, because this is what really helps the flour to stick and then the breadcrumb to cake on the outside. Makes for a perfectly crispy chicken tender.
- Breadcrumbs- We just used organic breadcrumbs that we found at Trader Joe’s. We coated it on nicely so it made for a crispy chicken tender! You can also use panko.
- Avocado oil- We used avocado oil for cooking the chicken since it’s great for high heat. Chosen Foods is our favorite.
- Honey- Not sure you could have honey mustard sauce without honey, so pretty self explanatory!
- Avocado mayo- We love avocado mayonnaise personally, but you can use whatever you prefer!
- Dijon- Dijon gives it a nice little kick and is the mustard part of the sauce! You can also substitute with regular yellow mustard.
- Lemon Juice- This just brings a little brightness into the honey mustard sauce and helps it all blend together!
If you love this, you may also love:
- Whole Wheat Pasta with Sauteed Veggies & Chicken Sausage
- Orecchiette Pasta with Italian Sausage
- Shrimp Penne Pasta
Chicken Tenders with Honey Mustard Sauce
These chicken tenders with homemade honey mustard sauce are better than store-bought hands down. They are perfectly breaded, crispy, and loaded with flavor! Best vessel for dipping into our easy homemade honey mustard sauce, ketchup, or both! You can also make these into nuggets if you prefer that shape. The kids went absolutely crazy over them. Try them out and let us know what you think!
Servings 4
Ingredients
For the chicken tenders:
- 3 chicken breasts or about 1½ lbs
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 2 eggs whisked
- 1 cup breadcrumbs
- 1 tsp sea salt
- 1 tsp pepper
- 1 tsp onion powder
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- ¼ cup avocado oil
For the honey mustard sauce:
- ¼ cup honey
- ¼ cup dijon mustard or yellow mustard
- ¼ cup avocado mayo
- ½ lemon juices
- ½ tsp smoked paprika (optional)
- ¼ tsp black pepper
Instructions
For the chicken tenders:
- Preheat your oven to 400F degrees.
- Pat dry chicken and slice into tender strips. If the chicken breast is big, we'll slice it in half lengthwise to make it thinner and then slice into strips from there. They also cook faster.
- Prepare dips for the chicken. In three separate containers, fill one with flour, one with the whisked eggs, and one with the bread crumb mixture. To make the bread crumb, add in: bread crumb, garlic powder, sea salt, onion powder & pepper.
- Coat the chicken tenders in the following order: flour, then egg, then bread crumb mix. Lay on a sheet pan and set aside while repeating with each tender. If you want them extra thick, go through the dipping process two times through. (May need to double the bread crumb, egg and flour if you double dip the tenders). We feel like one coat is plenty personally.
- Heat skillet (we use our cast iron). Once hot add in avocado oil. We are not doing traditional frying oil and amount but more than searing.
- Cook chicken for about 4-5 minutes on each side. Make sure to get the sides of the chicken so they get nicely browned all over. Once chicken is seared, add them to a baking sheet. Repeat with all tenders. Add more avocado oil if burns up.
- If the chicken is thin you can cook them all the way through on the stovetop. Just make sure the internal temperature is 165F degrees. If not, you can place the tenders in the oven on the baking sheet to finish cooking. It may only take 5-10 minutes depending on the size. Just keep checking the temperature!
For the honey mustard:
- Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl. Taste and add extra of anything you prefer according to your tastebuds. More mustard, more honey, etc! Enjoy!
- Serve the tenders with honey mustard and any other sides. Enjoy!
Notes
For Storing: Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3-5 days.