The Adventures of Target Chicken

I'm personally not a huge fan of chicken. It takes on whatever flavor you put with it, which is great, but so does tofu and I don't have to sanitize my counters for salmonella and god knows what else.  But the boy is rather fond of it (the chicken, not the salmonella) so I've been trying to get familiar with cooking it.

So I bought a bag of frozen chicken strips from Target.  I googled a Honey Mustard chicken recipe (as the boy and I both love honey mustard) and set to it. I knew people always raved when my Mom brines her meat (marinating in a salt and sugar water mix) so I did this overnight. In the tupperware, it looked more like an alien life form that was going to eat me as opposed to the other way around.

AHHH!!!!!!

So the recipe was pretty easy. Mix Dijon mustard and Honey (both of which I had!!!!) and pour over chicken and bake. Unfortunately, in my brine enthusiasm, I think I marinated too much chicken. Oh well. I crammed it all in the pan as best I could.

As Tim Gunn would say, Make it work!

 

Then all I did was pour the honey mustard mix over......at this point it looked kind of like sewage. Hooray! That has to mean I'm on the right track....right?

......hooray

And the recipe didn't call for cheese,  but I decided to try it on half. So after baking, it looked like sewage with a cheese blanket on it.

As far as taste.....it was the SALTIEST DAMN THING I'VE EVER EATEN! I knew I'd used the same brine recipe my Mom did, so I checked the Target bag only to find the chicken has been pre-treated with a "flavor solution".......which translates to salt. So I basically had soaked salted chicken in salt water. 

The boy was a real sport and just mowed it down without complaint, although when I mentioned it was a little salty he looked as relieved as if I'd mentioned that yes, I too had taste buds and he didn't have to pretend.

I tried to reheat the leftovers the next day, and somehow it got even saltier. There were like, salt veins in it.

So it was easy to make, but sadly, still an epic fail. Perhaps if if I'd wrapped them in bacon like the recipe suggested.....