Easy Frugal Cooking | Aussie Chicken
When I last posted this meal in my weekly menu plan, someone asked me why exactly this is called Aussie Chicken (it's not because it's made with vegemite!). As far as I can tell, this is a knock-off recipe of a dish that used to be served at Outback Steakhouse, and that's how it got its name. Given that Outback doesn't exactly serve authentic Australian food, this recipe probably should have a different name.
But, "Bacon Mushroom Honey Mustard Chicken Topped With Cheese" is a much more unwieldy title, so I'm going to keep calling it Aussie Chicken.
This is not as frugal as something like beans and rice, but it is way cheaper than takeout (you can make pretty much anything at home and save money over takeout!), and as long as you get your chicken and bacon on sale, this is also going to be cheaper than a meal made of prepared foods.
I usually serve this with a spinach salad so that there's some redeeming nutritional value in the meal. Because bacon, cheese, and chicken are a tasty combination, but I wouldn't say they're a nutritional powerhouse. 😉
I found my recipe on allrecipes.com a number of years ago, but I've seen lots of variations of this floating around in magazines and online.
Here's how I make mine.
I combine mayonnaise, honey, mustard, corn syrup, and dried onions with a whisk. If you use a spoon, the mayonnaise will stay in lumpy white bits.
The white bits in mine are the onions. I don't have any mayo lumps, thank you very much!
Then I sprinkle seasoned salt over my chicken breasts. You can use SeasonAll, but I just use the generic brand. I cut my chicken into thin cutlets just like I do when I make Chicken Tacos. Because I don't do big lumps of chicken meat (at least, not well!).
Then I heat my cast iron skillet and cook up some bacon slices and some sliced mushrooms.
(it was kind of dark when I took this picture...I apologize for the blurry bacon and mushrooms!).
After that, I cook my seasoned chicken breasts in the same skillet, which gives them a lovely bacon-ey flavor. I completely forgot to take a picture of this step. But, if you have thin chicken cutlets like mine, this should only take about 5 minutes on each side.
Place the chicken breasts in a baking pan, brush them with the honey mustard mixture, top them with bacon and mushrooms, and sprinkle with shredded cheddar cheese.
Bake at 350 for 5-10 minutes or until cheese is melted.
My kids and I aren't big fans of mushrooms, so I make some with.
And some without.
This is the one area my husband has a leg up on me when it comes to eating vegetables. I eat almost everything else under the sun, but I am not a mushroom fan!
Happy cooking, and I hope your chicken is delicious, with or without the mushrooms. 😉
Aussie Chicken
Printable Aussie Chicken Recipe
Chicken
4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - pounded to ½ inch thickness (I just sliced mine in half to make cutlets)
2 teaspoons seasoning salt
Sauce (I halve the sauce, but if you really love honey mustard, you might not want to halve it!)
½ cup prepared yellow mustard
½ cup honey
¼ cup light corn syrup
¼ cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon dried onion flakes
Toppings
6 slices bacon, cut in half
1 cup sliced fresh mushrooms
2 cups shredded Colby-Monterey Jack cheese
Directions
1. Rub the chicken breasts with the seasoning salt, cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
2. In a medium bowl, combine the mustard, honey, corn syrup, mayonnaise and dried onion flakes. Remove half of sauce, cover and refrigerate to serve later.
3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Place bacon in a large, deep skillet. Cook over medium high heat until crisp. Set aside. Saute the mushrooms in the same skillet until tender; set aside.
4. Place the breasts in the skillet and saute for 3 to 5 minutes per side, or until browned. Remove from skillet and place the breasts into a 9x13 inch baking dish. Apply the honey mustard sauce to each breast, then layer each breast with mushrooms and bacon. Sprinkle top with shredded cheese.
5. Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes, or until cheese is melted and chicken juices run clear (if you use thin cutlets, they'll already be cooked through, so you just need to bake them for 5 minutes, or until the cheese is melted). Serve with the reserved honey mustard sauce.
Want more? Browse through the other main dish recipes I've posted, and give some a try. Because cooking dinner at home is one of the most effective ways to save money.
That will make next week menu plan for sure ... hold the fungus, or how did you call them? ... mushrooms.
At my house this would be called Tasty Heart Attack Special. And it would be served with mushrooms. We consider mushrooms to be little morsels of meaty, tasty goodness. And the less you eat the more there is for us!
Why corn syrup? IIRC there was a CI recipe that used corn syrup to help an orange sauce stick to the chix; same with this dish?
Speaking of CI, how did the French Chix in the Pot work for you?
Ha, that got bumped! My whole chicken is still sitting in my freezer. lol
I don't know what the reason is for the corn syrup, but I'm pretty sure honey could be subbed.
I make this without the corn syrup. I don't sub anything for it (there's already some honey in the recipe) and I would say that it doesn't make any difference. I also only make about half the sauce because I don't serve any additional with it at the end... it already seems saucy enough to me. One thing that may make a difference is that I don't sauté (brown) the chicken at the beginning. I cut my chicken breasts really thin and then pound them thinner. Then I spread the sauce, add some bacon, mushrooms, and cheese and just put it in the oven. It ends up more moist this way (because the chicken absorbs the sauce since it hasn't been "sealed" by the browning) so you can avoid extra sauce (and extra work!)
looks amazing! 😉
WOW!!, Yum Yum!! I do something very similar with shredded chicken, bacon and cheese on a bun. I find that shredded chicken goes alot farther (should your sister and her kids show up - mine does). This will definately make the menu soon as we've not had it in a while.
BTW, Happy, Happy Birthday to you!!
Thank you. 🙂 I had a lovely, special day!
Yummy!
Oh my goodness, this looks amazing, and something hubby would definitely love! I made your Beef au Jus on Sunday, and Chris told me that it needed to be on the revolving menu list.
I love your skillet! I will have to keep an eye out for one of those.
That is an Aldi purchase. Love it!
That's it! We're going grocery shopping sometime this week and I'm going to Aldi! And we'll be making Aussie chicken, too.
This looks yummo - I think I'll try this in a low fat version, using turkey bacon, reduced fat cheese/mayo/honey mustard ... and extra mushrooms, please. 😉
Happy Birthday, FG!
That looks delicious! We don't eat chicken too often anymore (it's gotten REALLY expensive here and pork has gotten really cheap, so we're eating a lot more pork than we used to - in general we only eat a heavy-on-the-meat entree a couple times a week anyway). I may give it a shot subbing pork for the chicken , or save it til next time I have some chicken around. At any rate I'll be leaving the mushrooms out as all four of us are fungus haters 🙂
Happy Birthday!!!!! What are you having for dinner tonight, that you're not cooking?
For my birthday dinner, we had pizza, wings, and breadsticks. And an ice cream cake. 🙂
Wow, that looks really good (mushrooms included)! And in my book, chicken, bacon & cheese is nutritional! 😉 (I ate very healthily while on the Atkins diet--lots of veggies included, and eat poorly when off it)
Oh that is so going on the May menu! WITH the shrooms ... never used to care for them but now love them (not raw though) ... yummy ...
That looks really yummy.
I wish you a happy birthday!
I love allrecipes.com!!! I see all of the happy birthdays, so I will join in and say happy birthday as well 🙂
Kristen, I have reservations with allrecipes... simply because I have a hard time figuring out what is good and what isn't so good. I usually pick ones with great reviews, but always end up with a not-so-hot dish in the end. Do you have any fav recipe givers on there? Or any top secret method to finding good ones that you'd like to share?
Also... I'm making these tonight. But I'm going to marinade the cutlets in that delicious mustardy-mixture instead. I just got a marinade thing from tupperware (my grandfather passed and I was blessed to be the next owner of it!) and am dying to use it. Think it'll turn out well? 🙂
I feel your pain! I try to only try recipes with tons and tons of reviews and high ratings, but yeah, all recipes is not my go-to site. I used to go there more before I discovered Cook's Illustrated. lol
Let me know how the marinading goes. Are you just going to bake your chicken instead of sauteeing? I think the stickyness of the marinade would be a problem for sauteeing.
Yumm! I make the same recipe at my house. I think it is identical to yours!
Mmmm! I can't wait to make this recipe! My mouth is watering already!
I tried this tonight! My husband was so impressed, and so was I! Thank you so much! If you want to see my review you can check it out here!
http://awhimsicalwonderland.blogspot.com/2010/05/aussie-chicken.html
I just tried this recipe (minus the bacon). It was so easy to make! I have to say that I did not like this sauce at all. It was way too sweet for my taste and tasted strange with the other ingredients. Next time I will try this recipe with barbecue sauce instead. But overall I really like this new idea for making chicken!
Ooh, barbecue sauce is a good idea too.
I always go light on the sauce, which is why I only end up needing half the recipe's worth of sauce (and even then I usually have some left over).
I make this about once a month or so, because The Hubby and I both like it, but Outback carryout is expensive (they do still make this in my area, it's called "Alice Springs Chicken").
The recipe that I use for the sauce is:
1 cup honey
1 cup Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 teaspoon lemon juice
I've never had a problem with it being too sweet. Hubby likes to dip his chicken in the leftover sauce. Last time I made it in those portions I used half for that dinner and saved the other half to make a couple of weeks later. Both dishes were delicious. The whole recipe that I use is at recipezaar, here:
http://www.recipezaar.com/recipe/Now-This-is-Alice-Springs-Chicken-123522
This was absolutely delicious!! I did have to improvise for a couple items. I did not have corn syrup, so I just omitted it. I also had to mix a couple different kinds of mustard to get the right amount: Dijon, spicy brown and yellow, a pleasing combination. Also I used onion powder instead of flakes. To me this is just as good as Outback's, and definitely less expensive, I don't know about the calories though, but I don't care either : )
I must say that this dish was a total hit tonight!! I made way too much but oh well..Lunch tomorrow! HaHa Thank you so much!
oh that's funny! LOL im an 'Aussie' mum and can assure you that I have never heard of this before!
(on the other hand, rather pleased that when I clicked on the recipe it didn't come up with some insulting recipe like Kangeroo something..You wouldnt believe the amount of people who honestly believe that the movie Australia is an accurate discription of the entire country!)
Anyway, YUM yUM will be making tonite!
I've passed this recipe on to two of my girlfriends and their families are raving about it too! I cheat and use REAL bacon bits because I don't use enough bacon to make purchasing it worthwhile. It's a great cheat!!
i have a family of 7 and family and friend in and out all the time!! but what i noticed on ur recipe and not of other frugal recipe is there are not complete meals. My husband is Hispanic and does not and will not go for a sandwich or just a taco as a meal. I know people might think he is heavier then he is but he is very thin.I would love to know recipes that are frugal and a total meal that help my family
I made this recipe as is a few months ago and everyone loved it. In the time since, we've kicked the corn syrup... tonight I made it sans corn syrup - simply half yellow mustard, half raw honey - and it was fantastic. Thanks for ALL your great recipes... I use your easy yogurt recipe weekly!
We do the same thing. Alice Springs Chicken is what we call ours. I think that is the name that Outback gave it!! We have no originality! Except I have the hubby grill the chicken so it makes life a little easier for me in preparation. You should try it some time. I do the rest virtually the same way. One of our favorites. I do buy the Newman's Honey Mustard dressing on occasion again just to simplify things for myself!
I made this tonight and it was FANTASTIC! My kids usually don't eat chicken but all 3 of them liked it and so did my husband and I. The only thing I did different was the sauce. I just mixed some mustard and honey together omitting the mayo and corn syrup. Still super tasty. This is going to be a keeper for sure. 🙂 LOVE your blog!
I got this recipe off pinterest last week and made it and it was wonderful!! Not exactly a "skinny" recipe but man did it taste good! 🙂
Mmmm, yum! I have that exact frying pan, and I have the matching baking dish too, just perfect for this dish.
I have chicken thigh cutlets in the freezer, and mushrooms and bacon in the fridge, so I think I'l use them to make this soon.
I have never seen a recipe like this here is OZ. It may be tasty though.
Yeah, I don't think it's authentic Australian food at all! But it's a dish they serve at Outback Steakhouse, which is an Australian themed restaurant here in the U.S.