Quick Prep Honey Mustard Chicken Sausage Traybake

Brimming full of classic flavours that are a match made in heaven – sweet honey combined with sharp mustard – make this honey mustard chicken sausage traybake a fantastic midweek meal. Taking only a few short minutes to prepare, you can then pop it in the oven and virtually forget about it until dinner time. Yum!

See the middle of this page for step-by-step instructions plus handy photos to help guide you, or see the bottom of the page for quick recipe if preferred. I’d recommend spending a few minutes reading the following first though, for very useful information and tips on making this dish.

Healthy and Delicious

My aim in many of my recipes is to make them as healthy as possible and this honey mustard chicken sausage traybake is no exception. It’s an easy and delicious recipe that provides you with 2 portions of your 5 a day veg.

Many different vegetables would work in this honey mustard chicken sausage traybake however I’ve chosen carrot and red onion. They are both naturally sweet vegetables so complement the honey mustard flavours extremely well and they also make for a colourful finished dish. Finally, they both require minimal preparation time, which is an essential quality in any of my recipes.

Time saving tips

In this honey mustard chicken sausage traybake I choose not to peel the carrots. I often recommend not bothering to peel vegetables unnecessarily in many of my recipes.

As you can imagine (given the nature of my blog!), one of the reasons is to save on precious time. However a second even more important reason is the fact that like many vegetables, unpeeled carrots are more nutritious than the peeled variety.

The skin of a carrot contains high levels of vitamin C and vitamin B3 in particular, and you lose some these valuable nutrients when you peel it. So I suggest as long as your carrots are nice and clean you really don’t need to peel them at all. However, some people would still be keen to get the peel off in which case that’s not a problem, just bear in mind this will add a bit of extra time to your prep work.

In this honey mustard chicken sausage traybake, I actually use chipolatas rather than sausages. They’re thinner than normal sausages and I find when chopped into thirds, they tend to cook quicker and more evenly than their traditional, chunky sausage counterparts. It won’t make a huge difference though if you decide to use regular sausages instead in this traybake or if chipolatas aren’t readily available to you.

A final word on potatoes. You can use pretty much any variety of potato in this honey mustard chicken sausage traybake, however I like to use baby new potatoes and this is several reasons. Firstly, they are sweeter and more delicate in flavour than traditional larger potatoes. As the skins of new potatoes are much thinner, you definitely don’t need to worry about peeling them which saves you valuable time in your prep work. Finally, they are less fiddly and time consuming to chop up than full sized potatoes.

One baby new potato only needs to be quickly cut into 4-6 chunks, compared with a full sized potato that would need to be chopped up into considerably more pieces to cook in the equivalent time. For these reasons, I think baby new potatoes are a real winner in this honey mustard chicken sausage traybake.

All about the flavours

The mustard is of course one of the star flavours in this honey mustard chicken sausage traybake. This means it’s important to get the balance of mustard flavours just right.

Wholegrain mustard has a lovely rich and earthy flavour without being spicy so with this in mind, it’s the main one used in my honey mustard chicken sausage traybake.

Although the traybake would be delicious enough with wholegrain mustard alone, I find it can verge on being a little too bland, which is why I add an extra small amount of Dijon (French) mustard with it’s peppery spiciness to add just a little extra ‘kick’ to the traybake without being overbearing in flavour. Of course, if mustard is really your thing, you could be a little more generous with the Dijon. Equally, if anything too punchy in flavour puts you off, feel free to totally omit the Dijon.

Note that this recipe doesn’t include any added salt. That’s deliberate as I don’t think it really needs any extra – mustard and sausages come with salt already added so throwing a bit more in is not essential. Of course, if you have especially salty tastebuds, feel free to throw in a pinch of it before cooking the traybake.

One final word on the garlic- as with many of my recipes, I fully advocate using pre-minced garlic in this honey mustard chicken sausage traybake. Pre-minced garlic is readily available from many shops in jars and squeezy tubes and it tastes great. Personally, I just don’t see the point in spending precious time finely chopping up fresh garlic. Although I appreciate that many people prefer the fresh kind so if you’re happy to spend the extra prep time, feel free to do so.

Quick prep honey mustard chicken sausage traybake – step by step method

Serves 3-4

1) Start by preheating the oven to 210C / 190C fan (410F / 350F fan)

2) Grab a large bowl. Pop in 3 tablespoons of olive oil, 2 tablespoons of honey (the runny kind ideally), 2 tablespoons of wholegrain mustard, 1 teaspoon of Dijon mustard, 1 teaspoon of minced garlic (I use the pre-minced kind as this is much quicker than chopping your own), and the juice of half a lemon into it. Stir everything briefly to combine it nicely.

3) Chop three medium sized unpeeled carrots into approximately 1 cm chunks. When doing this, I’d recommend lining them all up together and cutting through them all with a big knife all together as it is much quicker than cutting through them individually. Just see the picture above for what I mean. Add these chopped carrots to the bowl with the wet ingredients.

4) Peel two medium sized red onions and chop each into 6-8 chunks. Add these also to the bowl.

5) Cut 375g (13oz) of unpeeled, baby new potatoes into approximately 1-2 cm sized chunks. This usually means cutting each potato into 4-6 pieces. Add these to the bowl with the other vegetables.

6) Finally, chop up 340g (12oz) of chicken chipolatas (in other words, thin chicken sausages) into 1/3rds.  Just like with the carrots, you can line several up and slice through them all together to save on time. Add these to the bowl along with all the other ingredients.

7) With clean hands, toss all the ingredients together to coat everything evenly.

8) Decant it all into a large roasting tray. Place uncovered into the oven and cook for 40-50 minutes total, ensuring that you give everything a quick mix approx. halfway though the cooking time so everything browns evenly.

9) Remove from oven, spoon into individual plates and serve!