An Easy, Flavorful Weeknight Dinner
With a crispy-crunchy exterior and a tender juicy center, my pretzel crusted chicken is the flavorful, EASY weeknight chicken that the whole family will love (at least mine sure does!)! It stays nice and crispy, unlike many baked breaded chicken recipes, and it has a beautiful golden brown exterior. This chicken is juicy, tender, and full of flavor. We’ll dip it in a honey mustard egg batter before coating in the crisp and crunchy pretzel pieces. I also include a honey mustard drizzle/dipping sauce, which really takes things to a whole new level!
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
Makes a quick, yet so flavorful weeknight dinner (like my creamy cajun chicken!). It feeds the whole family in roughly 30 minutes! If you need more weeknight dinner ideas, check out my weeknight dinners email series! Easy and kid-friendly. My kids will happily eat this meal, which makes it popular around here. It’s also easy to swap out the chicken breast for chicken tenders, which they love. Includes a tasty honey mustard sauce that pairs perfectly and takes things over the top. Crispy without any frying needed (though you can pan fry if you want; I talk more about this below).
Ingredients
Here’s what you’ll need to get started:
Chicken. We use either chicken breasts or chicken tenders. Chicken tenders are nice if you plan to serve this dish to kids, since they are easier to bite into. Pretzels. I like the small twisted kind, and recommend you use the same. I sometimes crush my pretzels with a food processor, but I typically just use a Ziploc bag and rolling pin to keep things nice and easy. Honey. Necessary for a honey mustard sauce, but we also add this to the egg dip that we use to help the crushed pretzels adhere. Dijon mustard. Similar to the honey, we will add this to our sauce and our egg mixture (it adds so much flavor!). Don’t use regular yellow mustard; you want the deeper and more sophisticated flavor of Dijon for best results. Spices. Including black pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, and smoked paprika (a favorite from my chicken and rice soup). We’ll also add a small pinch of cayenne to the honey mustard sauce. You can skip this if you are especially sensitive to spice, but it’s such a small amount that even my kids can tolerate it.
SAM’S TIP: The finer you crush your pretzels, the more easily they’ll stick to the chicken. I like to use my hands to really coat the chicken with as many pretzel crumbs as I can and make sure there are no bald patches. Remember, this is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!
How to Make Pretzel Crusted Chicken
SAM’S TIP: I usually bake my chicken, but you can also pan fry it. Pan frying is more work and more mess, but it yields a juicier and more flavorful chicken. I include instructions for pan frying this recipe in the notes below. Note there is a bit of a learning curve when preparing the chicken this way; if you’re not careful or don’t use enough oil, you can easily burn it and end up with a smoky, blackened mess. Enjoy! Let’s bake together! Subscribe to my newsletter to be notified of all the newest recipes, and find my free recipe tutorials on YouTube 💜
More flavorful chicken dinners to try:
